Calling Home
For most Londoners home is both in the city and somewhere else… at the other end of a phone line.
This short documentary, entirely shot inside phone booths in cheap international call centres, is a gripping, emotional portrait of long distance relationships between immigrants and their families in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and South America.
DIRECTORS/ PRODUCERS: Marcelo Starobinas & Maria Eduarda Andrade
To get a copy of your chosen film, please contact Eve Korzec from the Scottish Documentary Institute at eve@scottishdocinstitute.com
POST-SCREENING CONVERSATION QUESTIONS
1. What is the role of technology in maintaining transnational ties?
2. During the 2015 refugee crisis, asylum seekers were heavily criticised in the media for their use of mobile phones. Why do you think that is?
3. What kind of ‘refugee’ representations’ do we encounter in dominant media narratives? How can we move beyond them and instead focus on individuals’ humanity?
4. Where is home for you? What makes it special to you?
SCREENINGS
OFFICIAL SCREENING – Ismailia Film Festival 2009
OFFICIAL SCREENING – HotDocs 2009
OFFICIAL SCREENING – SXSW 2009
OFFICIAL SCREENING – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2008
OFFICIAL SCREENING – Dokufest 2008
OFFICIAL SCREENING – Make Dox Macedonia 2010
OFFICIAL SCREENING – Parvin Etesami Women Film Festival 2009
OFFICIAL SCREENING – Schnitt IFF 2009
OFFICIAL SCREENING – Dokubazaar 2009
OFFICIAL SCREENING – DOCSDF 2009
OFFICIAL SCREENING – Ismailia FF 2009
OFFICIAL SCREENING – Riverrun 2009
OFFICIAL SCREENING – Hotdocs 2009
OFFICIAL SCREENING – SXSW 2009
OFFICIAL SCREENING – London Short Film Festival 2009
OFFICIAL SCREENING – Sheffield Docfest 2008
OFFICIAL SCREENING – Dokufest Kosovo 2008
SCREENED – MMX Open Art Venue 2010
SCREENED – Edinburgh International Film Festival 2008 (Industry Screening)
RESOURCES
Feeling of A Home
Idomeni, in 2016; In this small village on the Greek-Macedonian border, an old lady recounts stories about locals who crossed the borderline and never came back. While her narrations reconstruct the History of the border, some Palestinians from Syria, living in the refugee settlement that has been built right next to the village, decide to set up a kindergarten. Thus, instead of waiting passively for the border to open, they exist in the present, they envision the future and they create conditions that bring them closer to a feeling of a home.
DIRECTORS / PRODUCERS: Io Chaviara & Michalis Kastanidis
To get a copy of your chosen film, please contact Io Chaviara and Michalis Kastanidis at feelingofahome@gmail.com
FESTIVALS & AWARDS / SCREENINGS
7th Athens International Digital Film Festival - Best Documentary Award
23rd Athens International Film Festival - Greek Short Stories - In Competition
19th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, 2017
8th Balkan Beyond Borders Film Festival, Brussels (Belgium)
8th Ethnofest - Athens Ethnographic Film Festival
5th Chania Film Festival
11th Greek Documentary Festival of Chalkida - DocFest
4th International Peloponnesian Documentary Festival
4th International Documentary Festival of Ierapetra
6th Boddinale Festival, Berlin (Germany)
3rd Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival, London (UK)
"Etonnants Voyageurs", St Malo (France)
GrecDoc Documentary Festival , Paris (France)
Cinemarkt - Brunnenpassage, Vienna (Austria)
Official Selection of the program EUFORIA ΙΙ/ European Films For Innovative Audience
Development 2016-2017 (Creative Europe, MEDIA) organised by Thesaloniki Documentary
Festival, «Cinema in Exile: Documenting Diaspora» (Greece, Poland, Hungary)
University of Thessaly, screening organized by the department of History, Archeology and
Social Anthropology, Volos
Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences / Institute of International Studies, Department
of Russian and East European Studies, organized by the Head of Department Kateřina
Králová, Prague (Czech Republic)
St. Mary’s University for Global Fair Film Screenings, Halifax (Canada)
POST-SCREENING CONVERSATION QUESTIONS
1. What does ‘home’ mean to you? How does the film engage with the notion of belonging?
2. In 2015 more than 800,000 individuals reached Greece through Turkey. In what ways do filmic stories communicate human experiences as opposed to faceless statistics?
3. What is your understanding of the word ‘hospitality’? Where does hospitality fit within the asylum process?
4. ‘One question: this interview is fake, is it better than the real one?’ Discuss the
role of media in instructing particular ways of seeing individuals seeking asylum.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Hamsa
Interviewed by the BBC towards the end of her family’s perilous four-year journey from war-torn Syria to Germany, Hamsa’s spirited determination caught the attention of two filmmakers. Beginning a new life in the small German village of Schnega, Hamsa welcomes the filmmakers into her family’s home to tell them their story, revealing how they have adapted to their new surroundings and how the village have worked to welcome them into their community. Hamsa’s radiant smile and boundless love for her children shows the untold story of Syrian refugees searching for a safe place to call home.
DIRECTORS: Caroline Spearpoint & Miriam Thom
To get a free link of your chosen film, please contact Nelli Stavropoulou from at movingworlds@gmail.com
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The film is free and available worldwide for screenings as part of the #hamsathedocumentary movement. There is an accompanying social impact campaign hosted by change.org, which features associated petitions that focus specifically on expediting the resettlement of refugees. Caroline Spearpoint and Miriam Thom are the filmmakers behind FoxWolf Productions andHAMSA. They are providing all organisations, individuals and groups with a package, including an introduction from Hamsa, letter from the filmmakers, posters and questions to begin a discussion and dialogue following the film.
POST-SCREENING CONVERSATION QUESTIONS
1. What is your initial response to the film?
2. How does the interweaving of news footage and personal testimony support your understanding of the experience of seeking asylum?
3. Which scene from the documentary do you remember the most and why?
4. In what ways can your community or group support newly arrived communities and individuals?
RESOURCES
Little Old One
Hedaya and her young sister have lost their home, friends and brother in the battle of Darraya. They have found safety as refugees in Istanbul but Hedaya being the only Turkish speaker member of the family has to act as translator and head of family for her unemployed dad.
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 £20.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
This short documentary was made during a SDI workshop in Turkey, organised by the British Council in partnership with Bidayyat for Audiovisual Arts.
This film was made as part of Stories, an opportunity for companies wanting to support filmmakers worldwide. Stories is an intensive residential filmmaking laboratory supported by and in collaboration with British Council, during which emerging filmmakers are empowered with the creative and practical tools to examine their sense of identity and nationality through film. To date we have run Stories in Benghazi, Tripoli, Rabat, Dhaka, Karachi and Ramallah. The films produced offer surprising and nuanced insights into these cities through strong, character-led stories.
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 as found in the media and contemporary political debates?
2. How does the film’s cinematography communicate the protagonist’s individual navigation of a new life in exile?
3. Language acquisition is an important parameter of integration. How important do you think language provision is and what is the role of the host country in ensuring access?
4. What is the role of time and ‘waiting’ in the experience of seeking asylum?
RESOURCES
Mothers / Anyák
Anyák is a story of how two women of different ethnicities, cultures and generations experienced motherhood. Klara is a Hungarian woman in her 70s, a mother of a large family, who brought up her children of various backgrounds in communist Hungary in the 1980s. Sarah is a Ugandan woman in her late 20s, who is raising her daughter Tunde in contemporary Hungary. The story is a reflection on the issues of identity and belonging in Europe in the past and today.
DIRECTORS: Mayya Kelova, Andrea Kobor & Adina Tulegenova
To get a free link of your chosen film, please contact Mayya Kelova at mayyakelova88@gmail.com.
Please cite ‘Moving Worlds, special Refugee Week‘ package in your email.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The film was made by the team of three graduate students of Central European University, Budapest, Hungary: Mayya Kelova (Turkmenistan), Andrea Kobor (Hungary) and Adina Tulegenova (Kazakhstan). The film was made as a part of the documentary film-making course “Historical Narratives and the Moving Image” taught by Jeremy Braverman and Oksana Sarkisova in Mirabaud Media Lab.
SCREENINGS
Festival for Migrant Film 2018, Slovenia (World Premier)
ARTS IN ACADEMIA, CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY, 2018
POST-SCREENING CONVERSATION QUESTIONS
1. How does the film emphasize the idea of shared humanity through the universal experience of motherhood?
2. How does the film’s focus on two different generations explore notions of identity in belonging? What has changed? What remains the same?
3. How may one’s family environment shape his or her sense of belonging?
4. What is your favourite scene and why?
RESOURCES
Ululation
A filmmaker from Scotland tries to understand what it means to be between two cultures by spending time with the women in her Algerian family.
DIRECTOR: Carina Haouchine
PRODUCER: Lindsay Goodall
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 £20.
SCREENINGS
WORLD PREMIERE – Edinburgh international Film Festival 2018
POST-SCREENING CONVERSATION QUESTIONS
1.Reflect on the role of language in supporting communication across generations.
2. In your opinion, how can cultural differences enrich family ties?
3. ‘Don’t let this make you forget, that as a woman you must live your life.’ How do the film’s different voices construct particular forms of female agency?
4. What is your favourite scene and why?
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