For the October 13th Film Screening Openmedia teamed up with Manchester No Borders to present a series of challenging short films about the human cost of the increasingly harsh border controls being implemented in the world's richer nations.
The first couple of docs looked at the UK detention centre industry. Each year thousands of immigrants - including women, children, victims of torture and those suffering serious mental and physical illnesses - are locked away indefinitely in 'detention centers' (jails) around the country. This contravenes international human rights law, but that doesn't bother the government, who are planning to double the number of detention centre spaces!
'The Barbed Wire Beat' is a film looking specifically at Campsfield detention centre in oxfordshire - notorious for poor treatment of prisoners - and the campaigns in the local area to have it closed down.
The second film, 'Vsit Dungavel' is about another infamous detention centre, this time in Scotland. It looks into the role of private business in running the detention centre network - the more people locked away, the bigger the profits!
The main feature of the night was 'Leaving or Dying', which looked at 3 people's experience of attempting to migrate to richer parts of the world. We thought the film was important to show, because most films about immigration tend to focus on 'worthy victims', that is people deemed legitimate migrants - people fleeing war or persecution. No Borders challenges the assumption that those attempting to flee poverty or find a better life overseas should be deemed 'illegitimate'. After all, it's not like rich nations haven't got a lot of their wealth from overseas...
The final film was "The Woomera Breakout", a short film documenting a protest against Woomera immigration detention centre in the Australian outback, which escalated into a breakout in which many detainees were freed. Australia's harsh immigration laws have been a source of inspiration for the UK government, particularly the new 'points based' immigration system, which judges immigrants according to their economic utility: commodities rather than human beings.
It was great that after the film the majority of the audience stayed behind for the discussion - some really interesting topics were touched upon, including: nationalism and identity, strategies of resistance, what motivates migration, and more.
These discussion times are extremely valuable, and usually go further than the points made in the films themselves - it's a great opportunity to start engaging creatively with an issue rather than just worrying about it!
for more info on the issues raised in the film see:
www.noborders.org.uk
www.nobordersmanchester.blogspot.com
www.noii.org.uk
www.ncadc.org.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment