Watching Refugees: A Pacific Theatre of Documentary
Keywords:
Behrouz Boochani, documentary, media witnessingAbstract
Inspired by Robert Dixon's volumes on visual culture, colonial modernity and the Pacific, this article argues for a distinctive refugee imaginary in media witnessing and documentary cinema in the South, focussing on Eva Orner's 'Chasing Asylum' and two documentaries by Behrouz Boochani: 'Chauka' (with Arash Kamali Sarvestani) and 'Remain' (with Hoda Afshar).References
Afshar, Hoda, and Behrouz Boochani. ‘Beyond Human: Artists in Conversation’. UN Magazine 13.1.
http://unprojects.org.au/magazine/issues/issue-13-1/behrouz-boochani-hoda-afshar/ Accessed 10/4/20.
_______Remain. Hoda Afshar. Associate Producer Behrouz Boochani. 2018.
https://art-museum.uq.edu.au/hoda-afshar-remain
Afshar, Hoda. ‘Remain in Light’, The Saturday Paper 10/11/18
Boochani, Behrouz. ‘A Letter from Manus Island’, The Saturday Paper, December 9, 2017.
Chauka. Please Tell Us the Time. Co-producer Arash Sarvestani. Sarvin Productions, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwaVMPYEzrA
‘This human being’, The Saturday Paper 24/11/18.
Bhaba, Jacqueline. Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014.
Butler, Rex. ‘Abbas Kiarostami: the shock of the real’, Angelaki: Belief in Cinema 17, 4 (December 2012), 61-76.
Capobianco, Enzo. 2017. ‘Behind the documentary that made it out of Manus.’ ACMI https://www.acmi.net.au/ideas/read/manus-island-documentary-chauka/ Accessed 26/12/17.
Clarke, Stewart. 2017. ‘Clare Stewart on the London Fest as Awards Launch Pad. And Films
on Social Issues.’ Variety 4/10/27.http://variety.com/2017/film/news/bfi-london-film-festival-clare-stewart-awards-launch-pad-1202580323/ Accessed 3/4/20.
Clendinnen, Inga. Dancing With Strangers. Text, 2004.
Collins, Barry. ‘Human Rights Cinema: The Act of Killing and The Act of Watching’, NoFo 14 (2017), 65-86.
Cox, Emma, Sam Durrant, David Farrier, Lyndsey Stonebridge & Agnes Woolley, Refugee
Imaginaries. Research Across the Humanities.Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
Dixon, Robert. ‘Citizens and Asylum Seekers. Emotional Literacy, Rhetorical Leadership and Human Rights’, Cultural Studies Review, 8, 2 (2002), 11-26.
Photography, Early Cinema and Colonial Modernity. Anthem, 2012.
Prosthetic Gods. Travel, representation and colonial governance. UQP, 2001.
Elphick, Jeremy. ‘Chauka Please Tell Us the Time – An Interview with Arash Kamali Sarvestani and Behrouz Boochani’,13/6/17.https://fourthreefilm.com/2017/06/chauka- please-tell-us-the-time-an-interview/
Accessed 2/4/20.
Farrell, Paul, Nick Evershed & Helen Davidson, ‘The Nauru Files’, The Guardian 10/8/16.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000- leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention Accessed 10/4.20.
Frosh, Paul & Amit Pinchevski, ‘Media Witnessing and the Ripeness of Time’, Cultural Studies 28, 4 (2014), 594-610).
eds, Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass
Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Gleeson, Madeline. Offshore. Behind the wire on Manus and Nauru. NewSouth, 2016.
Guardian staff. ‘Australian detainees can keep mobile phones’, The Guardian 22/6/18.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/22/asylum-seeker-detainees-can-keep-mobiles-phones-federal-court-rules. Accessed 3/2/20.
Hariman, Robert & John Louis Lucaites, ‘Icons’, in Roland Bleiker, ed, Visual Global Politics, Routledge 2018.
Hron, Madelaine. ‘Reel Refugees: Inside and Outside the Camp’, in Cox et.al., Refugee Imaginaries, 330-352.
Isaacs, Mark. The Undesirables. Inside Nauru. Hardie Grant Books, 2014.
Karlsen, Elibritt & Janet Phillips, ‘Developments in Australian refugee law and policy: the Abbott and Turnbull Coalition governments (2013-2016)’, Parliamentary Library.
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1718/Australian_refugee_law_and_policy Accessed 1/4/20.
Mountz, Alison. ‘Invisibility and the Securitization of Migration. Shaping Publics through Border Enforcement on Islands’, Cultural Politics 11,2, 184-200.
Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. 3rd Ed. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2017.
Orner, Eva. Chasing Asylum. A Filmmaker’s Story. Harpercollins, 2016.
Perera, Suvendrini. Australia and the insular imagination: beaches, borders, boats and bodies. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Quinn, Karl. ‘Smartphone movie filmed in secret shows life in Manus Island Detention Centre, Sydney Morning Herald, 15/6/17
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/smartphone-movie-filmed-in-secret-shows-life-in-manus-island-detention-centre-20170615-gwrt1w.html Accessed 2/4/20.
Robbins, Bruce. The Beneficiary, Duke UP, 2017.
Rothberg, Michael. The Implicated Subject. Stanford UP, 2019.
The Refugee Council of Australia, Amnesty International, Until When? The Forgotten Men on Manus Island, November 2018
https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/manus-island-report/ Accessed 10/4/20.
Torchin, Leshu. Creating the Witness. Documenting Genocide on Film, Video and the Internet. University of Minnesota Press,
Urry, John. Offshoring. Polity, 2014.
Whitlock, Gillian. ‘How Should I Read This?’, Biography, forthcoming.
_________ & Rosanne Kennedy, ‘The Messenger: Refugee Testimony and the Search for Adequate Witness’, in Cox et.al. Refugee Imaginaries, 480-498.
Woolley, Agnes. ‘Docu/Fiction and the Aesthetics of the Border’, in Cox et.al. Refugee Imaginaries, 164-164.
http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/10.4135/9781473909335.n29
Until When? The Forgotten Men on Manus Island. The Refugee Council of Australia, Amnesty International, November 2018.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
The copyright for articles in this journal is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use with proper attribution in educational and other non-commercial sectors.Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.1 Australia
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.1 Australia License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.1/au/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
