Cultural resilience through change: Finding the theme for tales from Arab Detroit

In this essay, I will discuss issues that guided me throughout the making of the documentary video, Tales From Arab Detroit. (1) Problems of re‐presentation of individuals from an Arab American community of great diversity, with reference to race/ethnicity, social values, class, age, religion, differences in national background and generational presence in the U.S. (2) Attempts to reconcile the divergent expectations of funders, co‐producer, sponsors, participants and audiences in producing this documentary. (3) How to effectively challenge racist notions of Arabs propagated in popular media and educational texts, and which have probably influenced audience preconceptions of the community.