On Friday 23 June, 92 people attended a screening of six films from the Protracted Displacement Economies (PDE) project in Brighton, UK. The event, ‘Stories without Borders’, took place at Duke’s at Komedia Picturehouse. Attendees included Councillor Bella Sankey (Leader of Brighton & Hove City Council) and Professor Sasha Roseneil (Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Sussex).
The PDE team were delighted to partner with Sanctuary on Sea for this unique Refugee Week event. Accordingly, the event panel was composed of PDE team members Professor Mike Collyer (University of Sussex) and Dr Yasmin Fedda (Queen Mary University of London), as well as Fateh Naserzai (Sanctuary on Sea), who facilitated the evening’s discussion.
Dr Fedda was able to provide more details about the filmmakers’ (lack of) previous experience, the workshop process and measures taken to protect the security of subjects. Professor Collyer was able to link the films to other research methods employed by the PDE team.
A vibrant discussion in the second half of the event saw audience members raise a wide range of issues. Topics that were discussed included: the UK’s role in creating forced displacement, the importance of ‘host’ communities in both the Global South and North, the importance of sharing the films with refugees and diaspora groups in the UK, and the relative unimportance of official aid in displacement-affected communities.
Professor Collyer and Dr Fedda were able to explain that some of the films had already been shown in many of the project’s research countries. Moreover, in Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, there are plans to show the films outside of their respective capital cities. All the films will be made available to view online for free once they are no longer being entered into film festivals and other competitions.