Aprender, Aprender Sempre ! (Lenine) ..... Olá, Diga Bom Dia com Alegria, Boa Tarde, sem Alarde, Boa Noite, sem Açoite ! E Viva a Vida, com Alegria e Fantasia (Victor Nogueira) ..... Nada do que é humano me é estranho (Terêncio)
Directed by Philippe Lioret; with script by Lioret, Emmanuel Courcol and Olivier Adam
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Welcome, the ironically titled latest feature by French director Philippe Lioret, is an intelligent antidote to the ongoing drum-beat of government and media dehumanisation of undocumented immigrants in France and internationally.
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Lioret’s movie, which is in French, English and Arabic and set in Calais, is drawn from real events. It centres on a developing friendship between Bilal Kayani (Firat Ayverdi), a poverty stricken 17-year-old Iraqi-Kurd refugee, and the middle-aged Simon Calmat (Vincent Lindon), a Calais swimming instructor.
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Bilal is trying to join his girlfriend Mina (Derya Ayverdi) and her family in London, and, like thousands of other teenagers, dreams of playing football for Manchester United. Simon is being divorced by his schoolteacher wife Marion (Audrey Dana), who helps run an illegal soup kitchen for the hundreds of so-called illegal immigrants trying to find a way to cross the Channel to England.
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Night shots of the Calais trucking depots and semi-militarised approaches to the Channel tunnel are chilling, as are the measures introduced by cross-Channel trucking companies, such as the use of sniffer dogs, heartbeat and carbon dioxide detectors and other techniques, to locate any stowaways.
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Early portions of the movie show Bilal and five other refugees being smuggled onto an English-bound lorry. The young men have paid a “fixer” €500 to get them into the back of the truck and have placed plastic bags over their heads to circumvent the carbon dioxide detectors. But they are quickly discovered and taken into custody by French authorities after Bilal becomes terrified and pulls the bag off his head. Bilal panicked because he had previously been traumatised by the military in Turkey who captured and kept him “hooded” for eight days.
Simon (Vincent Lindon) and Bilal (Firat Ayverdi)
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Bilal is brought before a Calais court. Although not imprisoned, because his is not legally considered an adult and is from an officially designated “unsafe country”, he is turned out on the streets with no shelter or assistance. Like other “clandestines”, Bilal ends up in “the jungle”, a collection of makeshift shelters for hundreds of refugees, half of them juveniles and mainly from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Africa.
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Bilal, however, is determined to reach London and, after seeing the white cliffs of Dover shimmering in the distance, decides that he will try and swim the Channel. Bilal is a talented footballer but is barely able to swim and uses his last remaining cash for a few swimming lessons from Simon. The rather gruff swimming instructor, having been previously indifferent to the situation facing refugees—a point of tension between him and his wife—is suspicious of Bilal. He decides, however, to assist the young Iraqi-Kurd, hoping that this might win back his wife’s affections, or at least prove to her that he is capable of “helping people”.
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Simon soon realises the actual purpose of Bilal’s swimming lessons, and as he begins to understand what is animating the teenager, a deeper bond develops between them. Simon tries to dissuade the 17-year-old from undertaking the perilous 30-kilometre swim across the Channel, one of the busiest sea-lanes in the world, but to no avail.
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Welcome does not offer detailed information about Bilal’s former life in Iraq and the desperate situation in that country, or his early relationship with Mina, but it does give a real sense of the brutalising and repressive nature of all border control measures. The key element in Lioret’s movie, however, is its exposure of how French law prosecutes ordinary people who attempt to assist destitute young refugees.
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Simon’s decision to assist Bilal, in fact, brings him up against Article L622-1 of the French penal code that makes it a criminal offence to help the undocumented immigrants. Under this legislation anyone found guilty of providing “assistance to the entry, travel or undocumented stay” of a foreigner can be fined €30,000 and jailed for up to five years. Annual quotas are set by the French government, moreover, for L622-1 arrests—5,000 in 2009—to try and intimidate local residents.
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A day after Simon brings Bilal and his friend Zoran to his apartment for pizza, the swimming instructor is called in for questioning by the police. Simon is later arrested and charged with aiding a migrant, and then people-trafficking for assisting Bilal in his attempt to swim to England.
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Lioret’s film is not ground-breaking cinema, but it’s a sincere and compassionate work. More than one million people saw the movie in the first two months of its release last year in France, an important indication that ordinary people refuse to be sucked in by government and media attacks on refugees.
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Firat Ayverdi, who had no previous acting experience, puts in a credible performance as Bilal. Lindon is particularly good as Simon, whose transformation, as he is drawn into Bilal’s struggle and emotionally changed by their friendship, is both nuanced and convincing.
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Welcome, which has just been released in Australia, is an important contribution to a subject that has been effectively dramatised by numerous filmmakers during the past two decades. Journey of Hope (1990), directed by Xavier Fuller, and Ghosts (2006) by Nick Broomfield are particularly memorable.
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Unfortunately, only a handful of movies have been made produced by Australian filmmakers on this issue. Given that Australian governments—conservative and Labor alike—have systematically demonised refugees and introduced increasingly repressive anti-asylum seeker legislation, this is an inexcusable omission. Local critics have expressed their concern over France’s L622-1 laws. None have mentioned that similar laws were introduced by the Rudd Labor government early this year.
Celebrated director Philippe Lioret's award-winning new drama WELCOME is a compassionate and inspiring story about the hope of new beginnings and the power of love, centring on two couples contending with issues of separation and dislocation.
17-year-old Bilal has spent three months travelling across Europe, in an attempt to reunite with his girlfriend Mina, who has moved with her family to London. The long journey is almost over when he finally reaches the coast of France; the English channel is his last obstacle. But with all legal options exhausted, Bilal resolves that his only option is to make the crossing himself.
He seeks the help of middle-aged swimming instructor Simon (Vincent Lindon), who is privately reeling from impending divorce from his socially-conscious wife. In an effort to win her back, Simon impulsively - and somewhat uncharacteristically - risks everything by taking Bilal under his wing...
A huge critical & box office success in its native France, this subtle but profoundly moving masterwork was awarded both the Ecumenical Jury Prize and Europa Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, named Best Film at the 2010 Lumiere Awards, and has received an astonishing ten César (French Oscar) nominations, including Best Film, Director and Actor. It's a cinema experience not to be missed.
As negotiations continue on worldwide goals and timetables to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, it is increasingly clear that industrially developed countries must take responsibility for the great bulk of the pollution that has caused global warming to date. . Developing countries said as much at last week’s G8 summit, when they called on the industrial powers to accept more stringent interim limits on the way to the agreed-upon 80 percent reduction in emissions by the year 2050. . In an opinion piece published in Accra, Ghana’s Public Agenda, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon put it plainly: The G8 leaders “have a special obligation to lead, given past commitments, the size of their economies, their disproportionate contributions of greenhouse gas emissions, and their responsibilities as donor countries.” . Ban called on the G8 and other major greenhouse gas emitters to “intensify their work” to reach an agreement at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen next December that will be “fair, scientifically rigorous, and comprehensive.” . Urging the developed countries to “make the first step” by agreeing to the developing countries’ demand to cut emissions by as much as 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, he also urged developing countries to “move substantially beyond business as usual” to cut their emissions. “But,” he added, “they should not have to choose between reducing poverty or reducing emissions. Both are vital.” . Ban emphasized that an effective agreement must include aid for poor developing countries to “help build climate-resilient economies, transfer green technologies and expand access to clean energy.” He also urged the G8 to honor “long-standing but unfilled pledges” to help poor countries achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals for social and economic development, including eradication of hunger. . The urgency of the UN secretary-general’s call was underscored last week by Grenada’s UN ambassador, Dessima Williams, who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States. . “For the smallest and most vulnerable among us, climate change is already here, causing damage,” Williams told the French news agency AFP. “It is a cruel irony that without adequate global commitments, the countries contributing least to global warming will be the ones most affected by its consequences.”
Author: Javier Cambron People's Weekly World Newspaper, 06/08/09 16:07
An architect’s new challenge
. By Javier Cambron . Javier Cambron, 22, will begin his third year at the Southern California Institute of Architecture this fall. He included this article as his “manifesto,” although not required, in his final portfolio at the end of this school year, as a result of his search to use his education and love for architecture to meet social needs. "I was frustrated at the direction of architecture and felt that this was a way to express this frustration to my professors,” he explains.”
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When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, walls were shattered, houses were torn off from their foundation, neighborhoods were decimated, and the city was left in ruins. It scarred, touched lives and united a country in ways that our country had not seen in centuries. In just one swift move from Mother Nature, 1,800 people were killed and thousands of families were displaced, leaving them without a place that they could call home. In the weeks following the hurricane, assistance stormed the city with people from all around the country; people without any ties to New Orleans came to offer whatever services they had to give. Change and unity was happening, and it was happening from the ground up. . The day after Katrina, hundreds of bids were being made by designers who had seen an opportunity in this misfortune, bids on how they would change and rebuild this city. But I question their motives for helping these communities in such a despairing and miserable time in their lives. . I’ve heard that quality of life is related to quality of space, but is quality of space available for everyone, or only for those who can afford it? Almost four years since Hurricane Katrina hit, only the wealthiest homes in New Orleans have been rebuilt, while rubble from the hurricane still lies on the ground, unmoved, while families are still living with despair in harsh conditions. Unfortunately this is not only occurring in New Orleans — over 80 percent of the world’s population is living in similar if not worse conditions than these. Thousands of families are homeless in the U.S. alone. Millions of children are living and working on the streets around the world. Families are living in overcrowded communities with unforgiving living conditions. People around the world are living without access to clean water or proper sanitation facilities. That this is occurring, and accepted, is not only wrong, it is immoral, unethical and embarrassing. . If there is ever a field in which professionals are specifically trained in the design of improvements in the lives of the masses, architecture would be that one; but has it taken on that responsibility? If architecture is a reflection of today’s culture, then maybe it’s true, maybe as a culture we just don’t care. But do we, as a human race, not have a responsibility at some point in our lifetime to construct change, to enhance the way of living for ourselves and for our own species as a whole? Mother Nature took the lives of over a thousand people in one move with Hurricane Katrina, but can’t architecture rebuild the lives of thousands in a couple, if not one move itself? It is not farfetched at all, and has been achieved before by architects, but very few have taken up that responsibility and challenge. . Architecture, generally speaking, would rather challenge itself with mastering the manipulation of light, the creation of climatic procession between spaces, with idiotic topics that seem to be secondary to the real social issues that surround it. My question is: Why can’t you have both? Why can’t we solve these social issues while still maintaining the aesthetic and conceptual ideas? What if we can turn despair into hope, misfortune into a possibility? . Where resources and expertise are scarce, innovated design can really make a difference. We face a huge humanitarian duty; we are architects, trained to affect lives. We need to stop being the stragglers that continue to hold our society back, we need to open our eyes and stop hiding from the challenge and the reality that surrounds us. A building can make a difference; we just have to design like we actually care about what is really going on around us. . People's Weekly World - 2009.06.09 . .
