New film series highlights plight of migrants in Mexico

Mexican actor and producer Gael García Bernal has launched a new series of films depicting the plight of irregular migrants in Mexico.

The four films, called The Invisibles (Los Invisibles) record the journey of hundreds of migrants from the border between Guatemala and Mexico on their way to the United States.

The premiere of The Invisibles, backed by Amnesty International, coincides with the start of this year’s Global Forum on Migration and Development which is taking place in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Every year, thousands of migrants are kidnapped, raped and sometimes murdered in Mexico. Driven by grinding poverty and insecurity back home, they travel through Mexico in hope of reaching the USA with its promise of a better life. But all too often their dreams are turned to nightmares.

The Invisibles exposes the truth behind one of the most dangerous journeys in the world and reveals the untold stories of the people who make the journey north through Mexico.

“The Mexican authorities must protect migrants in our country. The law must protect us all, whether nationals or foreigners. It’s essential Mexico sets a good example in the way it treats migrants”, explains Gael García Bernal.

During several interviews with migrants, Amnesty International registered the experience of abuses against the migrants. Many are raped, kidnapped or killed by criminal gangs, or harassed by public officials. They were the stories of men and women who, despite the dangers, were determined to make it to the USA.

“We made The Invisibles to shine a light on the abuses migrants suffer in Mexico. As the world’s experts on migration gather in Puerto Vallarta for the Global Forum on Migration and Development this week, hundreds of miles away migrants in Mexico are facing terrible dangers” says Sarah Shebbeare, the human rights NGO’s Mexico campaigner and executive producer of the films.

“The Mexican government has promised to improve protection for migrants. It is time to turn that promise into action. As a first step, we are calling on the government to establish a clear action plan and to collect and publish nationwide data on abuses against migrants and on the action taken to hold those responsible to account.” she added.

Nine out of ten irregular migrants come from Central America and Mexico is one of the few countries in the world that is both destination and transit route for migrants.

After the mass killing of more than 70 irregular migrants in Tamaulipas, in August this year, little has changed for those who cross Mexico.

The Invisibles “offers a unique testimony of migrants, aid workers and medical professionals who speak about the danger and hopes of thousands of men and women who cross Mexico in search of a better life”, says its producers.

The Invisibles can be seen on YouTube (www.youtube.com/invisiblesfilms and www.amnesty.org/en/theinvisibles) and other media outlets.

Film festival challenges human trafficking

Residents of Bristol are being challenged to confront the reality of human trafficking with a series of films exploring the issue.

They are shown by Unchosen, a project that uses film to challenge trafficking, and incorporates discussion with directors.

Unchosen maintains that human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal activity in the world, a global problem affecting the quietest town and village.

But they add that the power of Understanding Trafficking, to be shown on Tuesday, focuses on the human detail of one particular route and region. The film reports that every month at least 500 girls are trafficked from Nepal and Bangladesh, down the eastern corridor to India. Their fate is either forced labour or the international sex trade.

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Tina’s film shortlisted for award

Tina Gharavi has been shortlisted for the TalkTalk Digital Heroes Awards, which aims to reward people who are using digital technology and the internet to bring about social change.

She’s been put forward for the award after her work with people from migrant communities to increase awareness of asylum and refugee issues.

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Film gives new insight into youngster’s asylum victory

Exploring belonging through film

By Jenny Bourne

The projects are of differing sizes, address different age groups and have had access to different amounts of funding. But all have in common the ambition to work with young people in multiracial and deprived urban areas, to impart knowledge and skills about the media and, through film, to enhance young people’s awareness of their heritage and therefore their place in society today.

I’m Black and I’m proud

One of the first to embark on such a venture was BEAT – the Black Experience Archive Trust – in 2006. (See IRR News story: ‘Black Experience Archive Trust launch’) With backing from the Heritage Lottery Fund, members of Migrant Media – better known for hard-hitting documentaries on migrant labour exploitation and deaths in custody – worked through the Parkview Academy and the West Green Learning Centre in Tottenham (north London) with over forty Black young pupils of 12 or 13 years old. Meeting for two hours after school each week, the pupils were trained in digital media skills by Ken Fero and Soulyeman Garcia. At the same time discussions were held with the young people about the importance of knowing one’s heritage and they were encouraged to investigate their own communities to uncover the contributions that local Black people had made. Interviews were then set up and filmed with local Black people talking of their experiences in Britain – which ranged from being a pilot in the war to being part of a local rap crew.

BEAT co-founder Ken Fero explained how important it was for the young people to retrieve their own history. ‘When the anniversary of Windrush happened [1998] it was like if you didn’t come over on that ship, you didn’t exist. This project is all about pride in Black heritage which has been ignored for so long.’

In March 2007, the young pupils were taken to see the play ‘Black Heroes in the Hall of Fame’ at the Hackney Empire, an important theatre in east London, after which they had the chance to interview some of the cast members. And the comments of the youngsters were telling. From Sheddean, ‘At first I thought the performances were going to be boring but then when I saw a boy that was rapping I changed my mind. The bit I enjoyed most was the part when Malcolm X said “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” … I found the whole day interesting and I have learned to be proud of who I am and my skin colour. As they said in the play “I’m Black and I’m proud”.’ From Carlynne, ‘The Black Heroes in the Hall of Fame was the most fun, exciting thing that I have ever see because it was about the black people in the days and how they lived. It was very hard, but they tried their best to cope.’ From Stephanie, ‘I was happy I went, impressed and inspired. This is the best source of information to learn black history … Mostly black people made a significant contribution to the world like we started music and dancing and if it were not for our contribution to England and America would not be the super-powers they are now.’

This educative outing obviously left a deep impression. As well as interviewing local people, the young people also wrote accompanying material about their own family and a Black person they found inspiring. This resulted in an exhibition of autobiographical panels from some of the teenagers who had taken part, with heroes ranging from Marcus Garvey to Thierry Henry (then a striker for north London club Arsenal). In June 2007 the BEAT community history of three CD Roms with nine hours of oral histories was given to the London Metropolitan Archives and a website containing a selection of video interviews and information about the project was also launched.

I’m here to stay

Manifesta, worked during 2008 along similar themes to BEAT, but on a larger scale and across Europe, with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian foundation, Portuguese Television RTP2 and the Equality and Human Rights Commission on its ‘Belonging’ project. Manifesta was set up by Institute of Race Relations’ chair Colin Prescod and cultural worker Marion Vargaftig, who have collaborated since 1996 to develop (marginalised) youth voices, using artistic expression. So ‘Belonging’ worked with youth, with the arts, with new media and with marginalised communities.

‘Belonging’ was a film project with over twenty 15 to 19-year-old young people from culturally mixed backgrounds in Newham (an area of east London in which many minority ethnic groups, including recent refugees, have settled), Casal da Boba (where many families from Cape Verde have lived in slums in Lisbon) and the 20th arrondissement (one of the poorest working-class areas of Paris where immigrants have traditionally settled).

According to Colin Prescod, ‘our first priority and leading ambition was to use the project workshops to encourage youth expression in regard to their excluded predicaments – to tap into, to promote and to platform their preferred ways of addressing matters … With “Belonging” we were engaging in interrogating the notion of “youth identity crisis” which is much touted as explaining cultural or social alienation experienced by new generations of peoples recently migrated and settled in metropolitan heartlands of the capitalist world system.’

‘Belonging’ encouraged young people of these urban areas to explore on film how migrations shape communities and how young people ‘manage multiple, flexible identities while belonging to more than one place’. Working with local creative video artists and film-makers in each place, the objective was to carry the voices and perspectives of young people not just to their own communities, but also on into the mainstream and to policymakers in the three countries. And the project was as much about how to engage with young people as it was about examining the ultimate output. (Even some of the adult animators in the workshops reported on their own personal growth as a result of the challenges specific to working with young people on ‘Belonging’.)

‘The lessons for policy-makers from our project are firstly not about what the film-works say, but about how the quality of (well intentioned) engagements with youth will influence the quality of outcomes of youth projects,’ says Prescod. ‘These will be lessons for project funders, as well as for project organisers and project deliverers.’ And the impact of the films is made at a number of different levels. ‘The films were first screened in young people’s neighbourhoods, then at a variety of public venues in their home cities, as well as internationally at media festivals and on youth media websites – fronted wherever possible by the young film-makers. Finally, these films have been incorporated as core materials in an education pack, specifically designed to address “citizenship” in the formal education curriculum.’

Before the filming began there were a number of small workshops. There was a ‘careful search and selection and preparation of the professional video-artists and film-makers as well as of the local historians who took charge of the workshops in each city neighbourhood’ and ‘deliberate and thoughtful “front-loading” of the workshops, eg priming the young participants with relevant historical and sociological information about their neighbourhoods/cities/nations.’ Close attention was paid to assisting the young participants through each stage of the process. The Lisbon and Paris workshops were ‘animated’ by up to ten adults for up to fifteen young people.

From the workshops emerged forty-three short films. Those about London focus on cultural identity and the idea of Newham being a multiracial melting pot – with many street shots of colourful sari shops and markets. Interestingly, those from Lisbon and Paris, explore more complex social and political aspects of belonging, often through reconstructed mini dramas, having a greater emotional impact. ‘J’y suis, j’y reste’ (‘I am here to stay’), for example, shows a young woman – impassive but firm – contesting day-to-day racism on the Metro.

According to the project coordinators they learnt ‘that the way young people feel is determined by a range of things including generational issues, male/female relationships, fear and danger on the streets, the role of the police … A recurrent theme in all three locations is doing nothing, having nothing to do and being bored; so too are issues relating to peer pressure … unsurprisingly, scenes of habitual prejudice and daily life racism are also represented in some of the films.’

The DVD entitled Belonging/Pertencer/Chez Nous, presenting eighteen of the short films is available in English, Portuguese or French from the Runnymede Trust in the UK. An education pack for use in schools to go alongside the DVD is also available.

To change the world

The last film project is run from a somewhat unlikely source – a charity which commemorates the work of 19th century social reformer Octavia Hill. The Octavia Foundation is a charity in west London which encourages community involvement, the delivery of employment and training opportunities and the promotion of financial inclusion and social care. In 2008, with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Foundation gave eight young west Londoners the opportunity to document the history of their local areas in a film tracing the evolution of Labroke Grove (in Notting Hill, west London) from the 1958 race riots to the present day. The young people attended research sessions and had training in film, interviewing, oral history and archiving. Grove Roots, the highly-acclaimed film they made, premiered in February 2009 at the Electric Cinema on Portobello Road and went on to be screened across the country and was widely reviewed in the national press.

Following up on that success, the Octavia Foundation embarked in 2009 on a ‘Hidden Heroes’ film project (since renamed Hidden Herstories) to celebrate the heritage of four local women – Jayaben Desai, Claudia Jones, Amy Ashwood Garvey and Octavia Hill herself – who had a profound impact on community welfare. With support from the Heritage Lottery Fund the new project started in July 2009 and runs for eighteen months. Twenty local young people, seven of them disabled, received training in researching and interviewing techniques as well as production skills for filming and editing an hour-long film and magazine. They also had seminars with key people knowledgeable about Black history such as Marika Sherwood (founder of the Black and Asian Studies Association), Hakim Adi (academic and author on Black History) and Colin Prescod and received disability equality training to promote inclusion within the group. The archive research and filming was carried out over the summer of 2009 and the DVD incorporating three documentaries will be launched on International Women’s Day in March 2010.

According to Gabrielle Tierney who coordinates the project the young people ‘have had in-depth and lively research searches, interesting day trips to places such as parliament and Ealing sudios, and, most importantly, they have had extensive training throughout. Their confidence has grown and they have made friends within the project.’ A worker at the Institute of Race Relations, which supported the project via its Black History archive, commented on the way that the young people benefitted fom the intellectual contamination of going out to new venues. Eighteen-year-old Moktar, of Pakistani descent, thumbing through the IRR’s copies of the West Indian Gazette for information on Claudia Jones and Amy Ashwood Garvey came across stories about Patrice Lumumba’s murder. ‘Who is he? Can we do a film on him next? He looks really interesting?’ Tamieke, a young woman, educated in Jamaica, found one of her old school primers on a shelf and delightedly explained to the group the fables about Anansi the Spider-man.

Mohammed Adam El Omrani, who was introduced to the project by friend Moktar, who had worked on Grove Roots, sums up what he has gained. ‘The experience was a chance to get to know my area’s history and a touch of history of society. This gave me the opportunity, not to just learn about the historical background of society, but its politics which lie beneath it. This gave me knowledge I needed to know and that knowledge gained needs to be used and spoken of as I am initially into politics. There is a lot of wrong in the world today, but to imagine what it must have been like 40-60 years ago, more than credit must be given. With the willpower and motivation people can actually strive to change the world and make it a better place and we should take this opportunity to use people like Claudia Jones and Octavia to learn by example and to change the world as much as we can. I’d like to quote Malcolm X, “Tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today”.’

Obviously such film projects involve much preparation and educative programmes that go far beyond mere technical classes. But handled in the right way, they can give young people a unique opportunity not just to interact as a group, not just to acquire new skills and learn about their histories but to harness their imaginations to the fight to change the world.

The Institute of Race Relations is currently conducting a two-year research project on ‘Alternative Voices on Integration’ funded by the Network of European Foundations (European Programme on Integration and Migration).

Mugabe and the White African: taking Zimbabwe’s plight to the world

By Andrew Thompson

Mugabe and the White African is a covertly-filmed documentary about a white Zimbabwean family’s stand against Robert Mugabe’s land reform campaign. Co-director Andrew Thompson reveals how the film was made against enormous odds

Michael Campbell is one of a handful of white farmers still left in Zimbabwe since Robert Mugabe began enforcing his controversial land seizure program, an initiative intended to reclaim white-owned land for redistribution to poor black Zimbabweans. Since 2000, formerly thriving farms that employed thousands now sit derelict while poverty and hunger are rife among the majority of the country’s citizens. But Campbell, 74, refuses to back down. Our film, Mugabe and the White African, follows Campbell and his family’s unprecedented attempt to take Mugabe to an international court on charges of racial discrimination and violation of their human rights, against the backdrop of the 2008 presidential elections.

It was always our intention to make a really cinematic film, as well as a powerful documentary. So we needed to shoot on a large format: a departure from the hidden-camera news footage that more commonly comes out of Zimbabwe. Images and sound are so important in adding texture and layers to a place, and we wanted the audience to feel really immersed.

But having big cameras, a sound crew and proper recording devices did make it even harder to shoot in a country where filming is, to this day, banned (the only exception appears to be for al-Jazeera). We risked imprisonment or worse if caught – one reason why we get so little news coming out of the country. What makes our film special is that it offers the only insight the outside world has of what is going on behind Zimbabwe’s closed borders, of life lived under Mugabe’s regime.

We were filming during last year’s contested presidential elections, so security was even more tense than usual. On the ground this meant you couldn’t go far before you hit a roadblock manned by the interior security force. It was pretty hairy getting about. We always used different borders on each of the five trips, different transport, and I slept in different safe houses every night to keep moving. Our golden rule, which I was only forced to break once, was to always travel separately from the equipment.

We got away with it – just. After every trip there would be the inevitable knock on the door of Michael Campbell’s farm. The security forces were never more than two days behind me.

I’m quite used to working in hostile environments. I’ve previously made films in Iraq, Afghanistan and, most recently, Gaza. But filming in places like that is considerably more straightforward than shooting in Zimbabwe. In Gaza, the buck stops with Hamas. There, if you’ve got their blessing, you can stand on a street corner and film. In Zimbabwe you couldn’t. There was no rule of law. You were not supposed to be there, full stop. Zimbabwe was an infinitely scarier country to shoot in. You were never quite sure who was your friend or enemy. Mugabe had instilled such mistrust in people.

One of the white farmers we followed said you could be standing in church with someone who, the next day, would turn up at your farm with an iron bar in his hand and a gang of armed thugs by his side. There was constant fear all over the country. It sounds odd to say it, but in Gaza people felt and looked happier. They smiled. Life went on. But in Zimbabwe, it had stopped. It was not like in the rest of Africa, where you could have people selling mangoes and tomatoes on the roadside; it was like a country that had shut down. There were just shadows. This was the picture in 2008 and, according to most reports, the situation has only worsened.

Zimbabwe is a former British colony, and so there’s a tendency to presume the white farmers shouldn’t be there. Part of what appealed to us about making this documentary is that it wrestles with some uncomfortable questions. At one point, Michael Campbell’s son-in-law, Ben Freeth, asks, “Can you be white and African?” Well can you be white and American, or black and American? Of course you can. Racism is a terrible thing, whether it’s perpetrated by whites or blacks.

This film is ultimately about human rights, the rule of law and democracy. These are universals we should all care about. Zimbabwe is in the grip of a terrible dictator, responsible for serious human rights abuses, and those who oppose the regime are abducted, beaten, tortured and killed.

And what does the world do? Currently, very little. African leaders seem loath to criticise one of their own and the west sits on the fence, paralysed by the fear of being called neo-colonialists or racists.

Zimbabweans need the west not to wobble on sanctions. They need them to stick to the stance that the power-sharing government, the so-called unity government, is anything but. It is a government of disunity that shouldn’t be formally acknowledged. To say that we in the west recognise the government in Zimbabwe would be a catastrophic mistake for the millions of ordinary Zimbabweans trapped in their own country. It would send out all the wrong messages that Mugabe is someone we could do business with. If this film can go some way towards bringing to an outside audience the injustices going on inside Zimbabwe – and, more importantly, get something done about it – then I feel that we as film-makers will have succeeded.

• Mugabe and the White African is showing at the Ritzy at 6.30pm tonight, as part of the London film festival

International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival 2009

The UK’s only dedicated human rights documentary film festival returns for its seventh year.

Posted by Lauren Mayberry

This month sees the return of Document, the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival and the UK’s only human rights and social justice movie event. One of just 18 such festivals worldwide, Document began as a two-day festival in 2003. Since then, the programme has expanded exponentially, this year seeing a record number of new and award-winning pieces during the five day event, addressing issues relevant to the global community, whilst keeping a keen focus on the personal stories and human angles involved. Beginning on 21 October, Document 7 will show more than 60 national and international submissions at the CCA and GFT, covering a variety of themes, including homelessness, black history, environmental issues, mental health, disability and miscarriage of justice.

Opening feature Umoja: The Village Where Men Are Forbidden is a portrait of a group of North Kenyan women who, following sexual abuse by British soldiers and rejection by their husbands, form their own community. French directors Jean-Marc Sainclair and Jean Crousillal will introduce their picture, which sees the women travelling to neighbouring settlements to promote gender equality, awareness surrounding HIV/AIDS and circumcision issues, whilst defending themselves against the increasing threat of renewed male suppression. Exemplifying a recurring theme throughout the five days, the women refuse to be defined as victims, striving to change their position.

Goodbye, How Are You?, a tongue-in-cheek road movie, provides light relief but also presents a thought-provoking depiction of the former Yugoslavia. Durakovo: Village of Fools gives an alarming yet measured insight into fascism bubbling over, focusing on a community outside Moscow which invites citizens to come and learn how to be a ‘true Russian’, renouncing all previous rights to obey leader Mikhail Morozov’s principles.

With a nod to Glasgay!, LGBT issues will be raised by films such as Living Queer Africa and Le(s)banese, the latter concerning the experiences of young homosexual women in Lebanon, highlighting the complicated relationship between religion and sexual identity in Arab-speaking regions. Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen, directed by Spike Lee protégé Kortney Ryan Ziegler, probes the matter of race in transgender life. The Californian filmmaker will present a Glasgow School of Art Friday Event, before screening his ground-breaking piece on the 25th.

Areas closer to home have not been neglected by festival organisers, and seven films from The Estate series have been selected to augment discussions concerning the existing position for UK asylum seekers. Director Ruth Carslaw focuses on the lives of refugees living on Glasgow’s Sighthill council estate in the year preceding its demolition.

Discussions will be convened by LGBT Youth and Our Story Scotland, as well as a panel headed by Amnesty International campaigner Graeme McGregor. Commissioned as part of Amnesty’s 2009 Demand Dignity campaign, the educational film Poverty of Justice focuses on the lives of three individuals in Peru, Canada and Kenya straining to obtain freedoms and dignity associated with supposedly guaranteed, universal rights.

Associated with a number of partners, including Culture and Sport Glasgow, the Polish Cultural Institute and Goethe-Institut Glasgow, this year’s Document hopes to celebrate human rights by informing and inspiring a local audience, as well as supporting under-represented independent filmmakers. Expect accessible and engaging works, covering issues oft-times unaddressed by mainstream mediums, all for an affordable entrance fee. Refugees and asylum seekers are offered free admission, while a discount is in place for jobseekers and the unemployed. With foreign and more adventurous cinema having arguably enjoyed a resurgence of interest and popularity in the city in recent years, Document 7 offers an opportunity for a fresh look at inveterate issues and to experience production and viewpoints from outwith the big budget Hollywood playground.

Source:www.theskinny.co.uk

Short Film about the lives and experiences of refugees and asylum seekers

HAT News in partnership with Leicester Libraries have made a short film which is a documentary about the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees who have come from Zimbabwe to Leicester, United Kingdom.

Featured in the film are interviews with The Right Worshipful Lord Mayor of Leicester Councillor Roger Blackmore, Aidan Hallett – Area Manager for Refugee Action, Catherine Stevenson – Service Manager(British Red Cross), Peter Yates (Diocese of Leicester), Patson Muzuwa (Director of Zimbabwe Association), Lovemore Muchenje (Community Leader – ZIMALIVE), David Harris(Election Officer-South Africa) and other Zimbabwean refugees.

Richard Strong – Director/Writer/Editor
Producer – Elisha Shamba
Camera & Audio – MichaelYoung

As usual we’d be grateful for any feedback you might have at editor@hatnews.org

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