2020/11/25 14:02 Media Watch
Editor's note: The war in the Middle East and North Africa has lasted for a long time, from the US war on terrorism in the new century to the "Arab Spring" incident in 2010, and then to the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the entire Arab region is constantly filled with the smoke of war, a large number of refugees go to Europe, so the European refugee crisis as the background of the production of a large number of films. Recently, Guo Yifei, a 2020 doctoral student, young screenwriter and director of the Department of Literature of the Beijing Film Academy, was shortlisted for the 47th Academy Awards for American Students, and won the Best Documentary at the 2020 Los Angeles University Film Awards and the Best Documentary at the 15th CILECT Asia-Pacific International Film and Television Academy. This article is Guo Yifei's research and discussion on the narrative strategy of refugee genre films based on film narrative theory, and the original article was published in Media Observation, No. 11, 2019.
Since the beginning of the new century, the smoke of war has continued to fill all corners of the world, and has brought about a serious refugee crisis. This paper selects the film based on the European refugee crisis as the research goal since the new century, and analyzes the narrative strategy and characteristics in film creation from the perspective of film narrative. There is a long-term role of history behind the outbreak of this refugee crisis, and it continues to occur and develop at present, in addition to referring to the theory of film narrative and analyzing it in combination with film cases, the author also discusses it by drawing on sociological and international relations papers and personal experience in creating such films, combined with the contemporary context, closely following the international situation, and making artistic creation more realistic.
The Evolution and Development of Refugee Films
"War, as a collective atrocity, is mainly a catastrophe and fear for humanity, and is therefore often considered ugly and terrible." "Broadly speaking, a refugee is a person who has no means of subsistence, is displaced and needs to leave his or her place of origin as a result of natural or man-made disasters." After the end of World War II, a large number of films about war refugees were produced, and various countries created different styles of works. "The Pianist", "A Beautiful Life", "Schindler's List" and so on are all classic refugee movies set in World War II. This kind of film focuses on humanistic feelings, reflects on war, and thinks about human nature.
With the change of war background and political environment, the narrative means and themes of the film have also changed according to the times, and refugee films in the context of the new era have continuously exerted influence on the international film world.
With the beginning of the "refugee crisis" in Europe, films that explore the living conditions of contemporary refugees in light of the current situation have emerged, which is also the first concentrated creation of refugee themes after the background of World War II. The value of artistic creation lies in recording and reflecting the current life, and paying attention to reality can resonate with society and audiences. Akykolismäki's "The Other Side of Hope" (2017), "Flames at sea" (2016), which won the Golden Bear Award for Best Film at the 66th Berlin Film Festival, "Welcome to the Hartmanns" (2016) in 2016, and "Capernaum" (2018), which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, are all excellent refugee films in recent years.
Narrative subjects: refugee perspective and Western perspective
In refugee films, if the narrative perspective is distinguished from the large camp, it can be divided into two narrative perspectives: the refugee perspective and the Western perspective (rescuer perspective). By choosing different narrative methods from multiple perspectives or unilateral perspectives, you can better convey the attitude of the creator and the expression of different themes.
We can generally see the creator's narrative attitude towards the story from the choice of narrator of the film, so as to express different social views, cultural backgrounds and themes. In refugee films, most films use the dual perspective of "refugee perspective" and the "rescuer perspective" representing the West, in order to try to explore the current controversial refugee crisis from multiple perspectives more objectively.
For example, in Finnish director Akykolismäki's film "The Other Side of Hope", a protagonist is Khalid, a male protagonist from Aleppo, Syria, who came to Helsinki, Finland as a stowaway to seek asylum and tried to find his sister who was separated. Khalid, whose asylum application was denied by the Immigration Board, had nowhere to live and was living on the streets of Finland. Another protagonist is the Finnish restaurant owner Vic Strön, who finds Khalid sleeping in the garbage heap of his restaurant, takes him in, and helps Khalid find his sister who was lost during the escape. There is no obvious "narrative sound" in the film, and the audience follows the actions of the two protagonists through the camera lens. Khalid and Vicström, as two different "narrators", tell the story from the perspective of a refugee and a Western rescuer, respectively, and these two different perspectives hidden in the film are intertwined, completing the dream construction of the "present tense" for the audience.
The French film Illegal Entry, set against the backdrop of the Iraq War, and the German film Welcome to the Hartmanns, released in 2016, are also films that also have the same narrative characteristics of non-human and both perspectives. In "Illegal Entry", Rabir, a refugee from Iraq, breaks through all difficulties to smuggle into Calais with the aim of swimming across the English Channel to meet his girlfriend in the UK; the 2016 German hit comedy "Welcome to the Hartmanns" tells the story of Angelica, a retired Munich schoolgirl, who decides to take in a refugee, a young Nigerian named Diallo, despite her husband Richard's objections. Diallo lost his family to a terrorist attack and soon became a "family advisor" when he came to Hartman's home. He helps his mother Angelica overcome her alcohol problems, makes the father who injects Botox accept his age, helps his single daughter build a relationship with his jogging partner, etc., and at the same time, his arrival also brings a bunch of trouble to the family. Despite Diallo's positivity, he has sparked protests between pro-immigrants and anti-immigrants. Both films also complete the narrative through an "anonymous narrator". For refugee films, the use of such a relatively objective narrative method, with the narrative perspective of refugees and Western rescuers, can make the current refugee crisis discussed in the film get more calm thinking, and all the right to interpret is handed over to the audience through the lens.
Since the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2010, refugees from Asia, Africa and elsewhere have poured into Europe, mostly via the Mediterranean or the Balkans. After the violent terrorist incident in France in 2015, the "refugee crisis" attracted more attention in the European region and became a controversial topic, including political, cultural, economic, religious and other multi-layered issues. Such a refugee movie with a complex information background, if only one side of the perspective narrative (refugee perspective or Western perspective) is selected, the creator will often strive to make this one-sided perspective look more objective and credible, and the "multi-voice narrative" is between the "first-person narrative" and the "non-human narrative", it does not have an "omniscient perspective" based on the content, but through different "I" voices, from the side of each limited knowledge perspective around the same story, it can be described as an objective perspective in the subjective. While calmly narrating, the subjective perspective narrows the distance between the audience and the narrator. "'Multiple voices' narration can not only reach the inside story of an event or the inner state of the characters through the personalized narration of the characters, but also present the abstract generalization of the deep motives of the occurrence of the event or the formation of the character's personality through the differences between the various narrators." For the refugee crisis, a topic full of social controversy, the use of such a narrative method can be told from multiple perspectives of each protagonist, and the objectivity and credibility of the film are improved to varying degrees.
When the protagonists narrate the same event, whether they are consistent or opposing views, they can express themselves truthfully and naturally, thus triggering the audience's self-judgment and thinking. "Multi-vocal storytelling" is widely used in various genres of films, such as The Refugee Crisis (2018), which tells the story of refugees fleeing to the Italian island of Lampedusa through the perspective of refugees from different regions (Middle East, Africa).
When I created the film "Wounds Are where the Sun Shines into the Heart" about the victims of the Afghan war, as well as the films about Palestine refugees, I also adopted the narrative method of "multi-voice narrative". The former tells the story of Shapur, an 11-year-old boy living in the Afghan capital Kabul, after being injured in a terrorist attack. In the heart of Kabul, the "emergency hospital" receives war victims injured or killed by shootings and explosions on a daily basis, and Shapur was once one of the wounded. For Afghan children, school bags, sneakers, ambulances, helicopters and the sound of shells are all elements of life they are accustomed to. With Shapur and his father and mother as the main narrator, the film intersperses the story from the perspective of a doctor and a teacher, expressing people's desire for peace from different perspectives living in the shadow of war for a long time. The latter, set against the backdrop of the Palestinian-Israeli war, tells the story of the palestinian people's existence in a perennial war environment through the perspective of the wives of several Palestinian political prisoners.
Through the "multiple voice" narrative, the film can start from the hearts of different characters, around the same event comprehensive and multi-layered narrative, using such a "multiple voice" narrative method, even if the film only adopts a "unilateral perspective" narrative (that is, the unilateral perspective of refugees or the unilateral perspective of the rescuer), it can also achieve the effect of "objectivity in the subjective", which is also one of the best narrative means for refugee films with international social issues.
Complex themes in refugee-themed films
Most of the films set in the "European Migration Crisis" are produced by European countries, combined with the current social structure and public opinion tendencies in Europe, compared with the mainstream themes such as war, human nature or emotion, in addition to the specific "refugee crisis" as the narrative background, this type of refugee film shows the social conflicts, racial exclusion, pagan resistance, border issues and concerns about the future structure of Western society caused by the arrival of illegal immigrants.
(1) Social context and religious conflict
Since 2015, the "refugee crisis" has rapidly intensified into a political and social crisis and swept across the European continent. Based on this realistic background, no matter what angle the author uses to narrate, it is impossible to avoid the political topic of "refugee crisis", so the film more or less conveys the political tendencies of the creators. With the arrival of refugees from the East, the conflict between Islamic religious culture and Western culture is also evident in many stories. In addition, the successive terrorist attacks in France, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Germany have alarmed the world, and the sense of uneasiness among the European people is increasing day by day, and the rejection of refugees is increasing. This sentiment is reflected in many refugee films.
In the film "The Other Side of Hope", the male protagonist Khalid waited for the bus at the bus stop late at night, several drunks passed by, asked him to smoke in the local language, Khalid said that he did not understand, the drunk began to push it, Khalid hid in a hurry into the bus, the drunk man smashed the bottle against the window, and shouted: "Goodbye, camel rider!" In the immigration trial, the presiding judge said that in view of the current development of policing in Aleppo, Syria, the number of acts of violence and the number of deaths, the authorities believed that there was no obvious conflict and personal injury that made the residents from Aleppo need auxiliary protection (i.e., transitional status before obtaining official refugee status), and demanded that Khaled leave Finland immediately and return to Syria; after the restaurant owner hired Khaled as an employee, the health department inspected the restaurant, and Khalid was hidden in the women's restroom along with the pet dogs owned by the restaurant staff After the inspectors left, Khalid came out of the bathroom with his pet dog in his arms and said, "This dog is very smart, I taught him some Arabic, and he likes Islam..."
In Welcome to the Hartmans, there are several lines and plots that present the resistance of today's Western society to refugees and Islam. Hartman's daughter was harassed by thugs walking down the street at night, and the taxi driver broke the siege for her and told her: "Girl, you shouldn't go out alone lately, there are refugees everywhere who violate the law and discipline." At dinner, the mother raised the idea of hosting refugees, which was unanimously opposed by father and son. The father complained: "It's bad enough that Chancellor Merkel opened her doors to the Third World." This sentence seems to speak to the hearts of many Germans at the moment; Hartmann's neighbor expressed extreme rejection of the arrival of refugee Di Haro: "... That Muslim, don't set foot on this land, or I'll call the police. Richard's friends reminded him not to let his daughter have contact with "the refugee" alone for safety; Mrs. Hartman dreamed of her neighborhood becoming an Islamic world occupied by terrorists, women in black robes, mosques, camels, prayers... The terrorists with guns asked her why she didn't wear a burqa or a headscarf... The nightmare woke Mrs. Hartman awake. This scene is not without irony and allusion to reality, but also intuitively expresses the concerns of many Western people.
(ii) Border phenomena and illegal immigration
Recently, the human and social sciences have taken a keen interest in the "border issue" from a global perspective. More precisely, it captures and explores the dynamics on the boundary and the multi-party relationships that live around the boundary.
Almost all films about refugees are inseparable from the depiction of borders, and when the protagonists decide to leave their land and embark on the road of displacement, their journey to face various borders begins. The Nigerian refugee Diallo who arrives in Germany in "Welcome to the Hartmans", the Syrian refugee in Greece in "When the World Separates", Khalid who comes to Finland from Syria in "The Other Side of Hope", the Afghan teenager Jamal who travels through Pakistan, Iran and Turkey to London in "Between the Worlds", and Bilal from Iraqi Kurdistan in "Illegal Entry", their lives are affected by borders. When they are in the "middle" space of the border, the original identity of a person is not important, no matter where they come from, no matter what profession they have worked and what kind of family background, at this moment their identity is forced to unify into the role of "refugee", they often assume the role of a symbol or a metaphor. Refugees who enter the country illegally are always built into an image that is detrimental to the interests of others, perhaps because, on the one hand, illegal immigrants carry all the pain inherent in living on the borders, and on the other hand, because they are symbols of the negative consequences of the inequalities produced by the neoliberal economy. As we have seen, the illegal immigrants depicted in these films are either ready to cross the north-south line or are already on the other side of the border, looking for a different life. No matter where the characters are, they have to go through the dilemmas that come with the borders.
Almost all films have scenes in which cool labor is exchanged for living space, or certain shots highlight his tired body. For example, syrian refugees in "When the World Is Separated" are evicted for selling toys on the street, and Khalid in "The Other Side of Hope" barely gained a foothold by working in a restaurant. All the stories prove to us that the value of the existence of an illegal immigrant is measured by his or her labor force. In addition, whether it is the film "Illegal Entry", "Between the Worlds" or "The Other Side of Hope", we can see the scenes of refugees being transported in trucks or in cargo compartments under the ship. The refugee figures in these films are often objectified. In fact, official borders are not really an obstacle for them, but the bigger obstacle is the boundaries between them and Western religions, cultures, and races as they cross them.
Diallo in Welcome to the Hartmanns was taken in in Munich by his neighbors and German neo-Nazis. In "The Other Side of Hope", Khalid is randomly beaten by drunks on the street, rejected by the immigration bureau and then hidden, and at the end of the film, Khalid is even stabbed by strangers from unknown sources but has nowhere to complain. The "border" in the film refers to the external borders of Western countries, where the lives of refugees are threatened by great anxiety, fear, and instability; life on the border leads to a breakdown of mutual trust, replaced by ubiquitous questioning and insecurity on both sides. The border is both a place of hope and disappointment, but also a place of some happiness and pain. Therefore, for fictional refugee films, the fact that the protagonists have crossed the material boundaries through countless hardships does not mean that their situation as "border dwellers" is over.
The creative limitations and practical significance of refugee films
Since the 2015 terrorist attack in France, refugee films have set off a new wave of creative craze, and a large number of films of similar themes have been produced, thinking about current problems with different creative angles and narrative means.
Fireatsea, winner of the Golden Bear Award for Best Film at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival, examines european immigration through the eyes of the inhabitants of Lampedusa. "Instead of giving us the background, director Rossi tried to build up the fear little by little in a visual, basically silent way." Peter De Brugger, chief critic of Variety magazine, wrote in the review. In an interview with Variety magazine, Rossi noted that unlike news reports, his films are "about humans." "I hope this will raise awareness of public opinion, especially for politicians," he said. But he added, "It's not a political film, it's an opportunity to testify against one tragedy after another." Try to predict the inevitable. These people will continue to arrive, and even borders, barriers, and barbed wire will not stop such despair. ”
However, fictional screen images often portray refugees more negatively or negatively than documentary films, and this type of work can lead to simplistic depictions of refugees and Western saviour characters that ignore the historical, cultural, and political context of refugees. At present, most of the refugee-themed drama films are filmed and produced in the West, which inevitably has a one-sided narrative angle and ideological expression, even if the film narrated from the perspective of refugees is not immune to the influence of the author's own cultural context.
If we trace back to the root causes, the root cause of the refugee crisis is war, but from the composition of the term "refugee crisis" or "refugee problem" itself, it is not difficult to see that the public opinion tends to direct the responsibility to the refugees. Looking at the current popular refugee films in Europe, we can rarely see the cause of the "refugee crisis" - that is, the reflection on the war, most of the films choose not to judge or even avoid mentioning the current war situation, and the reason for this phenomenon is more or less related to the political environment in which the creator is in. However, the practice of talking about the "refugee crisis" apart from the core cause of war is inevitably a bit daunting, and in the light of the international situation and humanitarian perspective, what we need to think about more may still be the stupid collective atrocity of "war" created by mankind.
(Published in the November 2019 issue of Media Watch, the original text is about 12,000 words, and the title is: A Study of Narrative Strategies in Contemporary Refugee Films.) This is an excerpt, charts and notes, etc. are omitted, please refer to the original article for academic citations. ）
【About the Author】
Guo Yifei, 2020 doctoral candidate in the Department of Literature of Beijing Film Academy, young screenwriter and director
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Editor-in-charge: Liu Yufei