Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media. Issue 18: Refugee Filmmaking

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Alphaville Journal of Film and Screen Media podcast. Episode 03, Issue 18, ‘Refugee filmmaking’
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019-12-04) Sorbera, Lucia; Holly, Michael; Goldfish, Su
This discussion between Su Goldfish and Doctor Caroline Linette is based on a dossier for Alphaville Issue 18 on the challenges of separation for refugee filmmaking. It is moderated by Doctor Lucia Sorbera. The recording took place at the Esme Timbery Creative Practice Lab at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia on 14 October 2019.
Anonymity and representation: Everyday practices of ethical documentary filmmaking
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Blomfield, Isobel; Lenette, Caroline; Hemelryk Donald, Stephanie; Sorbera, Lucia
The five-minute film Mouth of a Shark (Isobel Blomfield, 2018) conveys a young woman’s experiences and precarious situation while she awaits an outcome on her refugee status determination in Australia. Aasiya (pseudonym) lives in community detention. Her interest in creating the film stemmed from her own acknowledgement that she had a platform as a young, literate asylum seeker woman with a “strong” story, and was therefore in a position to portray asylum seekers in a positive light. However, she cannot be identified in the film, even though it depicts her story, due to concerns over safety and her claim for asylum. We use this example to illustrate issues of anonymity and representation, and suggest strategies in line with our commitment to avoid depersonalising tropes in filmmaking. While we are committed to ensuring that people from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds exercise agency in filmmaking, protecting Aasiya’s identity had to prevail. We wanted to avoid depersonalising tropes, and instead devised filming strategies that were more respectful of the protagonist and, within the constraint of anonymity, ensured that Aasiya could still represent her story in meaningful ways. We argue for an ethical model that reconciles the need for both anonymity and representation in filmmaking, especially through collaborative editing.
Are You Watching Closely?: Cultural Paranoia, New Technologies, and the Contemporary Hollywood Misdirection Film, by Seth Friedman
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Lavender-Smith, Jordan; Mulvey, James
Carceral Fantasies: Cinema and Prison in Early Twentieth-Century America, by Alison Griffiths
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Young, Gwenda; Mulvey, James
Carceral-border cinema: The film from Manus prison. Introduction
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Tofighian, Omid; Tofighian, Omid
The articles in this dossier critically discuss the film Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (Behrouz Boochani and Arash Kamali Sarvestani, 2017) and reflect on its creation and response. The film is unique in many ways. It was shot clandestinely on a smartphone; shots were smuggled out of the Manus Island immigration detention centre (which has now been dismantled, but was located on the Lombrum Naval Base and officially called Manus Regional Processing Centre) to Lorengau, the main town on the island, then to Australia, and then sent to the codirector in the Netherlands. One of the filmmakers, Behrouz Boochani, was imprisoned at the time of filming and production, an imprisonment which continues at the time of writing; and the two codirectors have never met—the whole film project was conducted over WhatsApp voice messaging and never with conversations in real time due to poor reception in the prison.
Challenges of separation for refugee filmmaking. Introduction
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Hemelryk Donald, Stephanie; Sorbera, Lucia; Hemelryk Donald, Stephanie; Sorbera, Lucia
This dossier on Challenges of Separation for Refugee Filmmaking includes a number of short pieces and visual material from those who have either made films themselves (Su Goldfish; Rana Kazkaz) or who have used film as scholars and activists working in collaboration with people of lived experience (Isobel Blomstein and Caroline Lenette; Mandy Hughes). These writers discuss the questions of ethical and personal narratives and the ways in which certain story arcs present themselves as indicative of a time, a place or a kind of experience. They consider ideas of visibility and invisibility, and of short-term memory and long-term impact. The “separation” in the title for this dossier refers to separation by reason of war, by time and generation, or by experience.
Chauka calls: A photo essay
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Tofighian, Omid; Tofighian, Omid
This photo essay represents many of the major themes, feelings, people and critiques central to Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (Behrouz Boochani and Arash Kamali Sarvestani, 2017). The images and commentary explore the role of Manusian people, culture and knowledge; the systematic torture designed for the imprisoned refugees; the colonial logic underlying Australia’s border politics; the positionalities and perspectives of the codirectors; and the collaborative nature of the film’s production and distribution.
A Cinema of Things: Globalization and the Posthuman Object, by Elizabeth Ezra
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Mulvey, James; Mulvey, James
Cinematic poetics and reclaiming history: Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time as legacy
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Elphick, Jeremy; Tofighian, Omid
Australia’s brutal legacy of offshore detention has been marked by tragedy, human rights abuses and international condemnation, framed within an overarching failure to reach any true resolution. The difference between Australia’s two major political parties’ approach to immigration policy has been largely cosmetic and there is little tangible difference between the actual policies they have implemented and sustained. Human Rights Watch bluntly diagnosed Australia as having “serious unresolved human rights problems”, calling the conditions on Manus and Nauru “abysmal” (Giakoumelos). This paper examines the process by which successive Australian governments have advocated and implemented border and immigration policies and, more specifically, how control of information has been a central tactic in defining how such policies are perceived by the public. There is a questionable disconnect between Australia’s political class and those targeted by the immigration policies it sustains. Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (Boochani and Kamali Sarvestani 2017) captures the cruelty of Australia’s offshore detention policy, while intimately mapping the emotional and psychological experience of living in detention. Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time marks a fundamental shift, blunting attempts to dehumanise those in detention from a distance, while highlighting the moral crisis that this dehumanisation has created.
Collaborating with refugees: Power, ethics and reciprocity in documentary filmmaking
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Hughes, Mandy; Hemelryk Donald, Stephanie; Sorbera, Lucia
Representing stories through documentary film can offer a means to convey multilayered and sensory accounts of the lived experiences of people in extreme transition, especially former refugees. However, along with the potential of this medium comes the responsibility to engage with participants in an ethical and reciprocal manner. This article examines these prerequisites and applies them to two films about the experiences of people from refugee backgrounds in Australia. The first film, The Last Refuge: Food Stories from Myanmar to Coffs Harbour (2015), explores the Myanmar community, their sociocultural relationship to food and how this informs their identity. The second film, 3Es to Freedom (2017), documents a supported employment program for women from refugee backgrounds. Despite having different purposes and target audiences, the two films reinforced the importance of establishing informed and negotiated consent with marginalised people as the basis of all interactions and representations on film. Such negotiation seeks to minimise power imbalances and forms the ethical starting point for reflexive filmmaking practice that considers the filmmakers’ and participants’ intentions, and that promotes a heightened awareness of how knowledge is created through image-making.
Debordering academia: Centring the displaced and exiled in research. Foreword
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Tofighian, Omid; Hemelryk Donald, Stephanie; Davies Hayon, Kaya; Sorbera, Lucia
This issue of Alphaville centres on the work of displaced and exiled filmmakers and directors committed to challenging border violence. This is achieved in part through the work of the academic contributions in the main section, but perhaps most pertinently through the contributions of filmmakers in the two Dossiers. The editorial team in this issue practiced a form of borderless collegiality by imagining a scholarly publication that fosters empowering dialogues between academics, artists, activists and those with lived experience; debordering here begins with the vision of the editorial team and extends into the selection and configuration of contributions.
Displacement, exile and incarceration commuted into cinematic vision
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Tofighian, Omid; Hemelryk Donald, Stephanie; Davies Hayon, Kaya; Sorbera, Lucia
Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (Behrouz Boochani and Arash Kamali Sarvestani, 2017) is a documentary that exposes the systematic torture of refugees banished by the Australian Government to Manus Prison (in Papua New Guinea and officially called the Manus Regional Processing Centre). Shot clandestinely from a mobile phone camera by Boochani and smuggled out for codirection with Kamali Sarvestani, the film documents an important phase in the history of migration to Australia. This article analyses the film by foregrounding the experience of displacement, exile and incarceration as a unique cinematic standpoint. Boochani’s cinematic vision and socio-political critique will be interpreted in terms of embodied knowing and his existential predicament. The symbiotic relationship between the experience of seeking asylum, exile, imprisonment and the filmmaking process raises critical questions regarding the film as anti-genre, common tropes used to define refugeehood, and the criteria necessary to interpret and evaluate cultural production created from this unique position. The article draws on theories pertaining to accented cinema and incorporates ideas from social epistemology. Furthermore, it considers the author’s dialogue and collaboration with Boochani and Kamali Sarvestani and examines the significance of various contributors to the filmmaking process and cinematic vision.
European Cinema and Continental Philosophy: Film as Thought Experiment, by Thomas Elsaesser
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Erkan, Ekin; Mulvey, James
Film and Fashion Amidst the Ruins of Berlin: From Nazism to the Cold War, by Mila Ganeva
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Ulfsdotter, Boel; Mulvey, James
Film as folklore
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Boochani, Behrouz; Tofighian, Omid
Codirector Behrouz Boochani offers a critical reflection on Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time in which he discusses the multilayered meanings of the film. He shares his thoughts about his cinematic vision and how it is connected to the land. In this respect, the film cherishes the sanctity of the island’s ecosystem and knowledge system and also criticises the way the Australia-run detention centre degrades nature and the social fabric of the island. Boochani also elaborates on issues pertaining to reception and the way folklore (both Kurdish and Manusian) frames his resistance and critique.
Gender in Post-9/11 American Apocalyptic TV: Representations of Masculinity and Femininity at the End of the World, by Eve Bennett
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Fradley, Martin; Mulvey, James
Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers, by Katarzyna Paszkiewicz
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Kinik, Anthony; Mulvey, James
The Last Goldfish
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Goldfish, Su; Newman, Joanna; Ewington, Julie; Hemelryk Donald, Stephanie; Sorbera, Lucia
A few years before filmmaker Su Goldfish’s father, Manfred Goldfish, died she interviewed him on camera. He was reluctant to talk about the uncomfortable truths of his past, his previous marriage, his two other children and the persecution and murder of his family in Germany. “You can watch all that in a documentary”, he used to say to her. The Last Goldfish (Su Goldfish, 2017) became that documentary. This article contains three responses to the film. The first section, “Losing Harry”, written by Su Goldfish, focuses on the impact Manfred’s experiences had on his son Harry, connecting that experience to the despair of children currently held in the Australian Regional Processing Centre on Nauru. The second part, “Internment”, is written by historian Dr Joanna Newman whose research on refugees in the British West Indies grounds Manfred’s reluctant memories of rescue and internment in Trinidad in historical fact. The third section of this composite reflection, “Citizen of the World”, is a response from curator and scholar Julie Ewington who reflects on the film’s unravelling of hidden traumas and the unspoken histories in families.
Looking for Chauka
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Kamali Sarvestani, Arash; Tofighian, Omid
Arash Kamali Sarvestani codirected and produced Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (2017) while residing in the Netherlands and communicating with his codirector Behrouz Boochani through WhatsApp application. In this paper, Kamali Sarvestani explains his own journey as an artist living in diaspora and provides exclusive insight into the collaboration and consultation process with his exiled and incarcerated colleague. He details the influence of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, the guidance he gave Boochani (who had never directed a film until then), how the project transformed from its initial phases through to its distribution and reception, and the ongoing obstacles both directors face.
New Nonfiction Film: Art, Poetics, and Documentary Theory, by Dara Waldron
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2019) Varga, Darrell; Mulvey, James

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