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| Whirled Cinema - Brixton |
I loved the Meet My World trailer. It presented the project that they set out to put in action, among indigenous Peruvian children that offer their spirit so prevalently to camera. They in turn tell us of what it is to be Peruvian. How to dye clothes with vegetables. How to catch fish with our bare hands. And yet, as pointless and unrelatable as these actions seem to a mainstream audience they do it with such passion and such pride that it makes me want to know. I want to listen. Maybe it has something to do with the fact I am utterly fascinated with Peru and plan to travel there next year, but either way the film (and we only saw the trailer) conveys a passion that I think we'd all like to have for where we come from! Particularly great was that all 12 children wrote their own scripts!
Another favourite was by Survival International, voiced by Joanna Lumley. They travelled to a community hidden deep within India's Niyamgiri Hills. The people of the Dongria Kondh worship the mountain, and the land around it but their sacred ground is threatened by the Vedanta Aluminium mine. They take energy from the slightly fermented palm juice and farm their crops in the lands of the mountain temple. The Vedanta mine is polluting the water sources, cutting off people from their land and deforesting large parts of the forest - the Dongria Kondh were not willing to let it slide by easily. They went as far as saying that they would die to protect it. Perhaps the most powerful part of the film was the end, when we hear from a young boy who, as passionately as his elders says 'We'll give up our lives for Niyamgiri'. A greatly passionate people and a story with a happy ending off the screen too, as Vedanta was denied expansion and the tribe's mountain protected!
Women for Refugee Women's 'Set Her Free' was a harder one to get my head around. Mainly because we did not get a chance to see enough in my opinion for the subject matter to really hit home. The stories we did hear however, were upsetting when we think of how many women flee to us for safety, only to face detention in specialist prisons. Once again their freedom is denied. For the documentary they interviewed 86 women, of which 1/2 thought of suicide and 1/5 had attempted it. Jade's own story was a powerful one, which she shared when asked what her motivation was for making the film. She revealed that she was one of those who thought of suicide, that she lost all hope and would cut her finger just to feel pain, anything so that she wasn't numb anymore. It followed that Jade had been imprisoned by her own people - tortured along with approximately 300 others who had been abducted - but she had escaped and lived in the bush for months before fleeing to the UK, where she was detained further.
She told us 'It is not MY country. If it can beat and rape you. It is not yours'. And so she came here. So why does she care about those still detained, because she too lost hope as they do. She fled a country to be free. Yet she was denied her freedom once again. When asked why she helped make the documentary, she maintained that, 'I'm ok, but inside I'm dead if those are still suffering'. I thank her for sharing that story with us. I think it made us all realise just how privileged we are to have our freedom, when there are so many that do not.
This PDF link explains more about the research that Women for Refugee Women have carried out: http://refugeewomen.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/WRWDetained.pdfIf this video moves you in any way please also think about signing this petition: https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/theresa-may-british-home-secretary-end-the-detention-of-women-who-seek-asylum
Among the success of those we saw, was 'The Truth About Stanley', a short film based on the idea of false realities and homelessness. Some really great casting from the young team saw a piece that got us right at the heart. A nice script too, that certainly took us above the level of the short films I saw at the London Independent Film Festival later in the week. That aside, we had some visually stunning locations with the gas tower and TFL building across the river. The film follows sam who runs away from home from his addict father. He meets old man Stanley dancing in the street next to a Big Issue seller. Can in hand, he is in completely another world and so Sam follows him to where he sleeps. The two bond over make believe stories about Stanley's past until one day it goes wrong. Sam finds Stanley dead, and runs to a phonebox where his entire world crumbles. At this moment the rumble of the trains overhead could not have been more well timed. As Sam falls to the ground and as the world's noise seems all too much, the ground of the cinema shook with his world. He then, in panic and mourning, loads His friends body into the trolley they played in together and wanders, more lost than he was before. Really touching film where the ending leads Sam to tell his own fantasy story of a happy ending for him and his father. A lesson for us all I think, freedom isn't just physical, it's very much a mental thing too. We can't be afraid to imagine.
And finally, Amnesty International's Film about North Korean prison camps where people are arrested, abducted, detained by association and often even publicly executed. The film told us of a place where a man spent 9yrs in political prison, working from 3:30am in the morning until darkness fell in the evening. Ploughing 12-14 miles a day. With women - 4 women - shifting an entire tonne of soil in a single oxcart. Where if women are pregnant, they are given hard manual labour to bring on a miscarriage - forced abortion. In a festival about what it means to be free, this film was one of those that told us exactly what it meant to NOT be free. One lady told us that she had lost all of her children, aged 9, 7, 3 and 1. Another man told us of the executions, where people are forced to dig their own graves before standing over it and being hit over the head so that it is the last thing they see before they die. Of those summoned to the office of the men charge, before being strangled with rubber rope. For me, when I was making my documentary 'After Auschwitz', I was made aware of ghettoised Roma communities in the Czech Republic, detained immigrants in Greece - but this proved that it goes much further than that. In the beginning that's why I made the documentary, as an example of what can happen, as a warning that it can happen again. This film, maintains just that. The severe mistreatment, discrimination, genocide of certain groups, still exists.
So, what an evening! It was great to come together with other people who were passionate about giving a voice to the voiceless and about making factual films, as I am. I urge you to check out my next post to find out more about our film-makers, their motivations and their Q&A answers!
I leave you with one question - What Does Freedom mean to You?
#LABFFF
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