Forced Migration Online: Blog

The film ‘3 Years On’ is now available to view online. The film presents the views and experiences of representatives from NGOs working in Aceh on tsunami reconstruction in 2007. By this stage the majority of reconstruction and resettlement of residents of Aceh has taken place or was close to completion. The interviews offer reflections on the completion of this process and problems that still need to be overcome.

• 3 Years On

The film ‘Forgotten in the Mountains‘ is now available to view online. The film looks at the issue of forced displacement of indigenous Papuans in (West) Papua, Indonesia.

Papuan fears for their future have recently become focused on the issue of migration from the rest of Indonesia into their homeland. Following the failure of special autonomy since 2001 to deliver health, education and infrastructure benefits to Papuan villagers, or even a small measure of indigenous autonomy in key security and political matters, Papuans have come to feel that divide and rule sums up Jakarta’s approach across the board. Jakarta has been busily creating unwanted new regencies and provinces in Papua as well as pouring booming mineral revenues into the region. But this has merely succeeded in creating a few new elite Papuan beneficiaries of Indonesia’s endemic corruption and setting Papuans against Papuans for control of this corruption. More seriously it has been the pretext and occasion for bringing even more potential settlers—both bureaucrats and soldiers—into Papua as new military commands as well as bureaucracies proliferate. The new demographic balance in Papua pits a large minority of settlers—both “old”, officially sponsored transmigrasi ones and ongoing “spontaneous” ones (mostly traders and small bisnis people from eastern Indonesia)—against an almost dwindling Papuan one, beset by discriminatory birth control policies, an unchecked HIV-AIDS pandemic and 45 years of repression and displacement.

• Forgotten in the Mountains

The film ‘West Bank Stories‘ is now available to view online. The film presents the views of three Palestinians living in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank. The Dheisheh camp was established in 1949 within the municipal boundaries of Bethlehem on 430 dunums. It has a registered population of 12,045 of which approximately 6,000 are children. The camp’s residents were particularly active during the intifadah. The Israeli authorities built a fence around the camp and a metal turnstile for the main entrance, which were in place for almost eight years to prevent stone throwing at passing Israeli cars on the main Jerusalem-Hebron road. In 1995, the camp came under Palestinian Authority control, and the fence has since been removed.

The film offers tours of a disused Israeli military base, the Dheisheh camp and the Ibdaa (Innovation) cultural centre at Dheisheh which promotes cultural activities including a dance troupe and basketball team.

Attendees at the recent Dispossession and Displacement Conference were able to see a preview of the film as part of the film panel.

• West Bank Stories

As part of the London International Documentary Film Festival (29th March – 5th April 2008) will be screenings of four films were screened on the topic of forced migration.

Saturday 29 March, 8.00pm Renoir Cinema

“La Americana” (The American)

Dir. Nicholas Bruckman/ Co-Dir. John Mattiuzzi, USA/Bolivia/Mexico, 2008, Special Preview

October 2000, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Carmen, a young single mother, faces a life-changing catastrophe when her nine-year-old daughter is badly injured in a bus accident.

Unable to pay the hospital bills and for specialized care, Carmen makes the dangerous journey to the US to work illegally, staying for 6 years to raise what she believes will be enough money to support her daughter for life.

But when she returns home to Bolivia she discovers her savings are nowhere near enough. Should she stay with her ailing daughter, or make the perilous journey back to the US for a second time?

A portrait of the human side of the current immigration crisis in America.

Tickets £7/£6 Curzon members
Box office: 0871 703 3991, Renoir Cinema

Saturday 5 April, 11.05pm Stevenson Theatre, British Museum

Next Station (Próxima Estación)

Director: Estela Ilárraz, 2007, Spain, 69min, UK Première

A group of Ecuadorean immigrants in Madrid. They came to Spain to work, to support their families, but they desperately want to go home.

But if they go to Ecuador to visit their families, they know they will never again be able to get back to Madrid to work.

Ya Oromia

Director: Amanda Walsh, 2006, Australia, 5min, European Première

In the overcrowded housing estates of North Melbourne lives a young African woman, an Oromo, forced to leave her beloved homeland and family in fear of persecution.

Now she is reunited with her daughters, after more than six years enforced separation. The family must adjust to living together again in a new country.

For My Children (Por Mis Hijos)

Director: Aymee Cruzaleguí, Spain, 2007, 16min, World Première

What is a woman willing to do to make a better life for her children? Norma, a Latin American immigrant in Barcelona, struggles with the pain of solitude, forced to live away from her family in order to support them.

Tickets £3.00
Box office: 0207 323 8181, British Museum

For full programme see the LIDF08 website.

• London International Documentary Film Festival
• Forced migration films on FMO

The film Playing Between Elephants is now available to view online. The film was produced by Aryo Danusiri, Bruno Dercon and UN-HABITAT and has just won the Human Rights Award at the Jakarta International Film Festival 2007. It documents a post-tsunami and post-conflict Aceh, where an international body that is assigned to build houses, while an Acehnese village chief leads his people through the ups and downs of the ongoing reconstruction and rehabilitation process. The film very intimately shows how complicated it is to survive a traumatic event and then experience global intervention. Rebuilding a house in post-tsunami Aceh brings into play the whole world and forces the Acehnese people learn to deal with the friction between the global and local realms.

• Playing Between Elephants

The film Youth as Evaluators: Contested Spaces and Identity is now available to view online. In this documentary, young people talk about their countries and the issues that young people face there. The documentary was filmed during a gathering of young people involved in Public Achievement and similar programmes around the world (including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Turkey, Serbia, Croatia, Albania, Finland, Netherlands, and Northern Ireland) at the Corrymeela Centre, Ballycastle, Northern Ireland 11 - 22 August 2005. The focus of the event was on training participants as evaluators of their youth programmes at home, and on creating an international network of young people interested in improving young people’s experience of being civic co-creators.

• Youth as Evaluators: Contested Spaces and Identity

The film Frontiers of the San Francisco Treaty in Hokkaido is now available to view online. In this documentary, former residents of the Kurile islands talk about their migration from the islands and their hopes of returning to their homeland. The film is supplemented by audio interviews with key academics on the subject. The resource page for the film is also available in Japanese and Russian.

The video section of the website has now been updated. The film Lost Nation: Stories from the Uyghur diaspora has been launched following a preview screening at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Other enhancements to the video section include additional formats, in addition to QuickTime streaming versions which we use to deliver video for almost all possible bandwidths, the films are now in Flash and iPod format. The videos are also available for free via the iTunes store, or you can subscribe to the video RSS feed.

Please let us know if you have any comments about the videos on FMO.

There will be a screening of the film ‘Lost Nation: Stories from the Uyghur Diaspora’ at the Nissan Lecture Theatre, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, on Thursday, 31st May 6pm-7.30pm.

In the film, Five Uyghurs from five cities around the world tell their personal story of migration from Xinjiang (East Turkistan).

After the screening the film will be available along with other videos on the Forced Migration Online website.

For more information please visit:
http://www.forcedmigration.org/video/uyghur/