Manus Island is the setting for this unique collaboration between an Iranian-Kurdish journalist detainee and an Iranian-Dutch filmmaker, made with footage from a mobile phone. Having opened to rave reviews at the Sydney Film Festival, it’s showing in Melbourne today and this weekend at the ACMI:
Over a period of several months, journalist and Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani had access to a phone. In secret, he collaborated with Iranian-Dutch filmmaker Arash Kamali Sarvestani on the outside to create a film which portrays what he describes as “the coarsening banality and repetition” of indefinite detention.
Inside the camp, the film reveals sobering first-hand accounts of harassment, belittlement and mistreatment. Beyond the camp’s perimeter, it considers the legacy of the island’s foreign occupations and the implications of that history for Manusians who question the role they have been recruited to play in Australian politics.
Co-director Arash Kamali Sarvestani was a student of Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami and from that formative experience he sought to make this collaboration. Arash writes, “All this movie that I made came from Abbas Kiarostami’s film workshop, the sea.”
Chauka refers to a bird unique to Manus Island, a symbol that Manusians regard with deep pride. In a cruel twist, it is also the name given to the prison’s solitary confinement unit.