Female Voice
Women in Syria have not only borne the brunt of the country’s lengthy civil war, they have been marginalised and rendered invisible, despite their huge contribution to the struggle. Yet, few of the stories are told by them. In this collection of short films presented by the Scottish Documentary Institute in collaboration with the British Council and Bidayyat, female Syrian filmmakers share their experience and perspective being a refugee in neighbouring countries: Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
To get a copy of your chosen film, please contact Eve Korzec from the Scottish Documentary Institute at eve@scottishdocinstitute.com Please cite ‘Moving Worlds, special Refugee Week‘ package in your email so you can pay the discounted screening fee £50.
Anthology of Films:
• Suspended lives – by: Hiba Zaheer Hamdi
• Homeland – by: Tima Abdul
• My Other Half – by: Hala Al Sayasneh
• Loss – by: Dounia Alatwa
• Home from Home - by: Bayan Agha
• I Felt it Too – by Lamia Aboukhair
POST-SCREENING CONVERSATION QUESTIONS
1. According to the U.N. agency, women and children have a greater risk
of abuse and violence. How does the anthology challenge the tendency to victimise migrant women and deny them any form of agency?
2. What is the role of film in highlighting personal experiences? How do the filmic stories support personal expression?
3. What is your understanding of ‘forced choice’ within the context of forced displacement?
4. Which short filmic story was your favourite and why?
I For India
In 1965 Yash Pal Suri left India for the U.K. The first thing he does on his arrival in England is to buy 2 Super 8 cameras, 2 projectors and 2 reel to reel recorders. One set of equipment he sends to his family in India, the other he keeps for himself. For forty years he uses it to share his new life abroad with those back home - images of snow, miniskirted ladies dancing bare-legged, the first trip to an English supermarket - his taped thoughts and observations providing a unique chronicle of the eccentricities of his new English hosts. Back in India, his relatives in turn, respond with their own 'cine-letters' telling tales of weddings, festivals and village life.
As time passes and the planned return to India becomes an increasingly remote possibility, the joy and curiosity of the early exchanges give way to the darker reality of alienation, racism and a family falling apart.
A bitter-sweet time capsule of alienation, discovery, racism and belonging, "I for India" is a chronicle of immigration in sixties Britain and beyond, seen through the eyes of one Asian family and their movie camera.
DIRECTOR: Sandhya Suri
To get a private link of your chosen film, please contact Nelli Stavropoulou from at movingworlds@gmail.com Please cite ‘Moving Worlds, special Refugee Week‘ package in your email so you can pay the discounted screening fee £50.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Chosen as part of the official selection at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, I For India is an emotional and bittersweet documentary by Sandhya Suri which intimately explores the migratory journeys of her family, from their initial emigration to England, return to India, back to England again, and beyond (…) Sandhya Suri, the family’s youngest daughter, was inspired to create this, her only full-length documentary to date, on the basis of Super 8 home video footage and audio-letters exchanged between her father in England, and his family in India since the 1960s. Skilfully combining this material with more recent documentary footage and interviews, Sandhya tells her family’s story, opening her debut documentary with a dedication: ‘To my parents’. Via Farlung Families
AWARDS & NOMINATIONS
Official Selection, SUNDANCE Film Festival (2006)
Official Selection, Visions Du Réel (2006)
Best Documentary, Karachi International Film Festival
Best Documentary, Asian Festival of First Films
Silver Award, Film South Asia,
Best Documentary, Zagreb Film Festival
Best Documentary, Indo American Arts Council
Best Documentary, Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles
POST-SCREENING CONVERSATION QUESTIONS
1. The film’s use of news media footage offers us a deeper undestanding of the sociopolitical situation during that time. In your opinion, have views on immigration changed since then? If so, how?
2. How does the film explore the fragile yet powerful relationship between finding a new place to call home and the desire to return to one’s homeland?
3. What role does first person storytelling play?
4. How does the film’s evolving cinematography visually communicate the transitions in the lives of its protagonists?
RESOURCES
Farlung Families Film Directory Website
Revenir
For years, the stories of West African migrants and refugees have been told through the lenses of foreign journalists. Now there is a story from the inside. Part road-trip, part memoir, part journalistic investigation, REVENIR follows Kumut Imesh, a refugee from the Ivory Coast now living in France, as he returns to the African continent and attempts to retrace the same journey that he himself took when forced to flee civil war in his country ... But this time with a camera in his hand.
Traveling alone, Kumut will be documenting his own journey; both as the main protagonist in front of the camera, as well as the person behind it, revealing the human struggle for freedom and dignity on one of the most dangerous migratory routes in the world. A controversial film experiment, a courageous journey and a unique collaboration between filmmaker and refugee; which is not without consequences.
DIRECTORS/PRODUCERS: David Fedele & Kumut Imesh
AWARDS
WINNER “Jury Prize” at the Document Human Rights Film Festival 2018 (Glasgow, Scotland)
POST-SCREENING CONVERSATION QUESTIONS
1. How does the film allow us to engage with the real lived experiences of forced displacement and move away from stereotypical representations of asylum seekers and refugees?
2. How does the film’s cinematography communicate the protagonist’s esoteric journey as he re-traces his journey?
3. How does the interweaving of different storytelling styles (first person, jour- nalistic, documenrary) enrich the storytelling process and how does it impact our interpretation of such complex socio-political issues?
4. Refugees and asylum seekers’ stories are usually mediated by others. How does the film’s unique collaboration between David Fedele and Kumut Imesh, amplify the latter’s voice?
RESOURCES
Oktoskop Austrian Television – (December 2018, in English)
Birgun Gazetesi – “Mülteci gözünden mülteciliğin hikâyesi” (November 2018, in Turkish)
Deutsche Welle (DW) – “Mit der Kamera auf der Fluchtroute” (September 2018, in German)
El Pais – “Proezas y despojos del migrante” (January 2018, in Spanish)
Sky and Ground
A compelling, ground-level immersion into the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time, Sky & Ground accompanies the Nabi clan, a large, extended Syrian-Kurdish family, as they painstakingly make their way from their home in Aleppo, bombed out by the war, to the Idomeni refugee camp on the border of Greece and Macedonia. Their goal is Berlin, where they will reunite with family members and seek asylum but first they must make the arduous and dangerous journey through Serbia, Hungary and Austria.
DIRECTORS/PRODUCERS: Talya Tibbon & Joshua Bennett
To get a copy of your chosen film, please contact Talya Tibbon at talyati@gmail.com
Please cite ‘Moving Worlds, special Refugee Week‘ package in your email so you can pay the discounted screening fee £50.
RESOURCES
The Merger
A former star footballer returns to his home town, but finds his political views aren’t welcome. When he is persuaded to take over coaching the struggling local footy team, his idea to recruit refugees to make up the numbers takes the community on a journey of change.
DIRECTOR: Mark Grentell
PRODUCER: Anne Robinson
WRITER: Damian Callinan
To get a private link of your chosen film, please contact Nelli Stavropoulou from at movingworlds@gmail.com
Please cite ‘Moving Worlds, special Refugee Week‘ package in your email so you can pay the discounted screening fee £50.
AWARDS & NOMINATIONS
The CinefestOZ Film Prize 2018
AACTA Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards: Nominated Award Best Lead Actress & Best Supporting Actor 2018
Casting Guild of Australia Awards (CGA) Best Casting in a Feature Film 2018
Melbourne International Film Festival: Nominee Best Narrative Feature People’s Choice Award 2018
SCREENINGS
AACTA Festival Opening Night Film 2018
AACTA Festival Brisbane 2018
2nd Phase Theatrical Release 6th September 2018
London Migration Film Festival 2018
Global Migration Film Festival (United Nations) 2018
Glasgow International Film Festival Scotland Premiere 2018
Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival Ireland Premiere 2018
Socially Relevant Film Festival New York City – Opening Film 2018
POST-SCREENING CONVERSATION QUESTIONS
1. ‘The art you create is based on the experiences you have in life. So, when I had to make a film in a regional area, and I was trying to find iconic locations and imposing symbolism.’ says director Mark Grentell. How did you find the film’s use of symbolism?
2. What is your understanding of the word ‘integration’? How does such a concept fit within processes of belonging?
3. In your opinion, how does the film negotiate the idea of boundaries?
4. What was your favourite scene and why?
RESOURCES
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