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‘Flee’ Screening and Post-Show Talk: Contemplating Our Shared Humanity

AFR-SG — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 04:00:02 +0000

On 12 June, Advocates For Refugees – Singapore (AFR-SG) partnered with local cinema The Projector to screen Flee, a film recounting the true story of Amin, a gay Afghan refugee who fled Afghanistan following the 1989 civil war. Amin’s experience of stigma, shame and trauma at the intersection of two marginalised identities provided ample food for thought on the realities of living beyond the margins and the enduring commonalities that tie us as humankind.

by Amanda Chen

These topics were dissected in our post-show dialogue featuring Dr Gül İnanç, founder of Opening Universities for Refugees and founding co-director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies, Dr Hana Alhadad, a trauma-informed consultant and researcher with extensive experience working with migrant communities, and Ms Mathilda Ho, founder of AFR-SG and Deputy Chair for the Southeast Asia Working Group at the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network. The dialogue was moderated by Ms Selene Ong, a volunteer of AFR-SG.

To kick off the dialogue, attendees were invited to respond to the question, “What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear ‘human identity’?”

Dr Gül elaborated on the concept of human identity as being complex and shifting in nature. She highlighted that different labels can be assigned to one population, each with their own definitions which may have specific implications in formal contexts; examples include ‘forcibly displaced’, ‘stateless’ and ‘refugee’. These labels and their accompanying legal criteria may overshadow the humanity — the unique perspectives and experiences — of the people bearing them. Dr Gül noted that we can refer to the responses given by the audience, including ‘freedom’, ‘belonging’, ‘acceptance’ and ‘dignity’, to understand what connects us as humans. While the parts of our lives that we, or others, pin as our identity may always be subject to change, our striving towards a fundamental set of needs underlies the shared human experience.

Dr Hana expanded on the centrality of belonging to human identity. More than simply being included in a community, which may be predicated on changing parts of oneself to fit the expectations of the group, belonging implies unconditional acceptance. This freedom for people to be themselves completely, knowing that they will be accepted as they are, can be seen as a fundamental human need, but also as a privilege that not everyone enjoys.

Addressing a question from the audience on whether belonging exists on a spectrum, Dr Hana noted that we each have many intersecting identities and may find ourselves ‘belonging’ to some communities, such as our home, more fully and naturally than others, such as our workplace. Adding to the notion that human identity is rooted in how we see ourselves in relation to others, Mathilda highlighted the importance of connecting with others on a personal level. In particular, real interaction is essential for us to accurately understand the perspectives of other people and to perceive them as they are, rather than as they tend to be portrayed in popular media.

As the topic of discussion progressed to our attitudes towards people marginalised by society, a question from the audience probed whether asylum seekers must portray themselves as “model” refugees in order to be granted asylum, and whether this bar is set too high. Dr Gül recalled her encounter with the term ‘first class refugee’ in Malaysia — this referred to someone with education, money and proper identity documents, often from a Middle Eastern country such as Syria.

In contrast, others such as Rohingya refugees from Myanmar were treated as inferior. This highlights how differential treatment exists even within marginalised groups, depending on how different aspects of identity such as ethnicity and class intersect within an individual. Dr Gül noted that guidelines for the recognition and treatment of refugees remain as those laid out in the 1951 Refugee Convention developed following World War II. Formal changes to make policies more inclusive, such as towards elderly refugees, and more flexible to accommodate unique challenges faced by refugees in different regional contexts, are yet to be enacted.

In parallel to the concept of ‘model refugees’, Selene noted how certain ‘attractive catastrophes’ tend to garner more attention and sympathy than others. Our recognition of important issues in the world tends to depend on the media and their perception of what stories appeal most to audiences. For instance, the spread of information regarding ongoing humanitarian crises in Africa or Yemen pales in comparison to that relating to the war between Ukraine and Russia. Dr Gül noted that crises are experienced at an individual level, varying in degree depending on the specific contexts that people find themselves in; the framing of longstanding phenomena like migration as crises to nation-states is much more debatable.

Dr Gül further pointed out that pejorative labels such as ‘boat people’ and ‘illegal migrants’, popularised by media narratives, unfairly strip refugees of their humanity when after all, in her words, “actions can be illegal, people can’t”.

An audience member posed the question of whether we should focus on extending compassion to those in need in our backyard, or in communities distant from us — both Dr Hana and Dr Gül felt a strong responsibility to do both.

Taking a holistic view of the issue of forced displacement, the panelists also considered perspectives of other stakeholders involved. In response to an audience member’s question on managing the tension between the “scammy and dangerous” nature of trafficking journeys and the imperative on refugees to make these journeys due to their lack of alternatives, Dr Hana shared observations from interactions with human traffickers in her work. Some viewed themselves as saviours offering refugees a lifeline in desperate circumstances, some came from refugee backgrounds themselves and earnestly tried to find policy loopholes to get refugees to their destinations, others were exploitative and operated for the purpose of profit. Despite the ostensibly good intentions of certain traffickers, the danger that refugees are exposed to as a result of illicit journeys remains unchanged. Mathilda emphasised that this concept of irregular or illegal movement, allowing traffickers to exploit migrants’ journeys for monetary gain, only persists due to policies that make ‘legal’ journeys impossible in the first place. Acknowledging them as the basis of the desperate decisions that refugees are forced to make is perhaps the first step to alleviating their suffering that results.

Another question from the audience considered potential costs to the majority when marginalised groups are accepted into a community. This is salient in Singapore, which lacks geographical space to accommodate refugees — yet, Mathilda pointed out that our drive to expand economically has seen land reclamation efforts repeatedly come to fruition over several decades.

A lack of priority could hence be a stronger factor dissuading us from accommodating refugees compared to a lack of space. Selene added that as we readily enjoy the privilege of safety and belonging in our daily lives, we are responsible to share this privilege and uplift others who lack it.

At the end of the day, we are all simply humans, each with our own unique set of experiences and world-views. The documentary film ‘Flee’ offered an immersive insight into the world of an individual sidelined by society multiple times over, and the dialogue following it rounded our understanding of how we can support such individuals living life on the margins. To resist indifference and enact change, we can first and foremost respect each individual as the person that they are. As we forge connections and recognise the commonalities we share, the elements of life that make us feel human — belonging, acceptance, dignity and freedom — will follow.

Amanda Chen is a current BSc Neuroscience and Psychology student at King’s College London. She volunteers actively with organisations providing material and wellbeing support for refugees in the UK, as well as in northern France outside of term-time. Joining AFR-SG’s team for the first time in 2022, she is keen to learn more about the issue of forced displacement in the regional context and to do what she can to make a difference.

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‘Human Flow’ drips its way into Singapore’s impermeable borders

AFR-SG — Sun, 15 Jul 2018 20:05:00 +0000

Like a cage in search of a bird, Ai Weiwei locks the Singaporean film-goer in 2 hours of cinema-turned-refugee-camp in his experiential film, a hymn to life in an unlivable world.

By Tan Jing Ling

There is a sublime beauty to Human Flow in how it depicts space, freedom and movement. But it is a beauty that I cannot bear to swallow.

For a country whose borders have been closed to refugees since 1996, Human Flow is a passport to places even the Singaporean passport cannot access. Shot across 20 countries, Ai brings to the big screen a tragedy that the world has closed its eyes to: the global refugee crisis.

Human Flow opened in theatres in 2017, at a time when many parts of the world were rapidly closing doors on refugees. All art is political, and this documentary film by artist and political activist Ai, is as much an aesthetic production as it is a political statement. To make art out of tragedy seems cruel, but it is one way to breathe life into a dying crisis.

And breathe it did into the air of The Projector’s Redrum theatre, as the 145-minute film closes the gap between my privileged-air-conditioned-Singaporean-cinema-seat and the atrocities that refugees face. Brought face to face with individuals who lived on deaths, with homes built on dust, and with camps full of scarcity, Ai portrays things just as there are: inhumane.

The film opens with a wide-angle shot of a rubber boat at sea, crammed to each centimeter by orange lifejackets wrapped over touching bodies. This references Ai’s earlier art installations about the refugee crisis: Reframe which wrapped Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi in rubber rafts, as well as Law of the Journey, a massive lifeboat installation in Prague.

Above the surface of the sea, the first words of the film are unspoken: “I want the right of life, of the leopard at the spring, of the seed splitting open – I want the right of the first man.” Ai is quoting Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet’s Hymn to life.

It is through quotes like this that Ai makes his moral and political stance apparent in the otherwise speech-deprived film. Rarely does a film speak so much by saying so little. Except for the interviews conducted, Ai’s world is short of words but extensive in imagery. Ai sets the audience on an uncomfortable journey, with nothing but pithy quotes from poems and media article headlines to navigate one’s way.

The lack of a narrative proper makes the lengthy film hard to follow. Switching back and forth between many different countries, Ai leaves the audience lost and disoriented. Yet, that is the point: the film is not about refugees, but about us in safe harbours, being unable to comprehend the sheer torment of being a refugee; us making policies and decisions that we would never subject ourselves to.

This is Ai’s subtext: being a refugee means losing, amongst all things, control of one’s narrative. To watch human flow is to experience what it is like to be a refugee – a stark contrast to the clearly defined narrative and privileges of being a Singaporean.

This, two hours of experiential film, is more than enough to reduce the audience to silence, gasps and tears, yet it can hardly be compared to the eternal agony refugees experience. Two hours of emotional turmoil for film-goers is to refugees a permanent reality, 24/7, 52 weeks a year, for an average of 26 years.

Such arresting statistics and media headlines punch the audience in the moral gut each time they appear onscreen. The New York Times photoessay “The Migrant Crisis, No End in Sight” was accompanied by literal scenes of families walking arduously from nowhere, to nowhere. Ai’s use of poetry, headlines and statistics, across centuries and across countries, proves that ‘human flow’ is a perennial problem, one that we can read of and measure, but choose to disregard.

Yet, it is not the statistics that hurt, but the individual stories. One scene shows Ai interviewing a refugee woman, seated with her back facing the camera, shaken to a puking ball of tears when asked seemingly ordinary questions about her life. Another scene shows a man weeping at a cemetery, with nothing but a few photos left of his loved ones who were drowned by the journeys they made across the seas. While the film relies on Ai’s cinematographic choices to capture the tragedy of movement, it is these raw stories that depict the reality of being a refugee.

Unlike other visual documentary films like Ron Fricke’s Samsara, Ai does not detach himself from his subjects. Ai features himself in several scenes interacting with refugees or filming in the background. One scene shows Ai temporarily exchanging passports with a refugee, with Ai saying: “I respect you and I respect your passport.”

Ai’s inability to detach makes the film contentious: is the film really about the refugee crisis, or is it about Ai’s role in the refugee crisis? Does Ai treat refugees as objects of his aesthetic endeavor, or as dignified human subjects? Is Ai, from drone shots to close-ups, too far from understanding, or too close for comfort?

There are many other ways to read the film: there’s Ai’s position as a political refugee of China and his identity vis-a-vis the refugees in his film. There’s also the shared oppression of animals and refugees, with caged birds and a Palestinian tiger who lost her home. The space and distance between refugees and countries, between refugees and freedom, between refugees and the audience. There are many possible conclusions to draw from such a film with a loose narrative and grandiose intentions. Regardless, Ai has created a film that once seen, cannot be unseen, and transcends ideological and geopolitical borders.

With a sold-out show and panel discussion for the film held during Singapore’s Refugee Awareness Week 2018, the refugee crisis seems to have reached the shores of Singapore in spite of its closed borders. One drop at a time.

As Ai aptly invokes from the Dhammapada in the film:

Neither in the sky nor in mid-ocean,
nor by entering into mountain clefts,
nowhere in the world is there a place
where one may escape from the results of evil deeds.

Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow will be screened in Singapore at The Projector on 22 July and 25 July. For tickets and more information, click here.

Tan Jing Ling is an undergraduate of Sciences Po and the National University of Singapore, majoring in social science and political science. He has been volunteering with the Advocates for Refugees – Singapore (AFR-SG) since 2017 and was in the working committee of Refugee Awareness Week 2018. In his free time, Jing Ling enjoys films and local theatre, and occasionally writes reviews about them if he gathers the will to.

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