Screening vulnerability in the Anthropocene: Island of The Hungry Ghosts and the eco-ethics of refugee cinema

Zygmunt Bauman points out that between 1950 and the early 2010s, the estimated number of displaced people, or ‘people in transition’, increased from one to 12 million, ‘but as many as 1 billion refugees-turned-exiles and ensconced in the nowhereland of camps are predicted for 2050’. ‘[Refugee] Camps...

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Main Author: Chu, Kiu-Wai
Other Authors: School of Humanities
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2023
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168969
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1689692023-06-27T02:24:52Z Screening vulnerability in the Anthropocene: Island of The Hungry Ghosts and the eco-ethics of refugee cinema Chu, Kiu-Wai School of Humanities Humanities::General Visual arts and music::Film Ecocinema Anthropocene Southeast Asia Refugee Studies Environmental Humanities Zygmunt Bauman points out that between 1950 and the early 2010s, the estimated number of displaced people, or ‘people in transition’, increased from one to 12 million, ‘but as many as 1 billion refugees-turned-exiles and ensconced in the nowhereland of camps are predicted for 2050’. ‘[Refugee] Camps ooze finality’, he writes, ‘not the finality of destination, though, but of the state of transition petrified into a state of permanence’. This global mass of exiles, refugees and asylum seekers is both confined within highly guarded detention centres (‘fencing in’), and at the same time excluded from the general public (‘fencing out’). In short, as Bauman puts it, ‘becoming an inmate of a refugee camp means eviction from the world shared by the rest of humanity’. In recent decades we have seen a growing number of film and media representations that address the conditions caused by the global refugee crisis. This essay begins with a short critique of social activist, artist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei’s ‘Refugee Series’ and proceeds to a study of Australian filmmaker Gabrielle Brady’s Island of the Hungry Ghosts (2018), a documentary set on the tiny Christmas Island, geographically situated in Southeast Asia. It explores the cinematic subjectivity of the displaced human and more-than-human beings in the Anthropocene epoch, and asks how, with such collective fatigue in the face of the global refugee situation, can we address these important issues and present them via cinematic means? 2023-06-27T02:24:52Z 2023-06-27T02:24:52Z 2021 Journal Article Chu, K. (2021). Screening vulnerability in the Anthropocene: Island of The Hungry Ghosts and the eco-ethics of refugee cinema. Screen, 62(4), 577-585. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjab059 0036-9543 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168969 10.1093/screen/hjab059 2-s2.0-85142890951 4 62 577 585 en Screen © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Screen. All rights reserved.
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Humanities::General
Visual arts and music::Film
Ecocinema
Anthropocene
Southeast Asia
Refugee Studies
Environmental Humanities
spellingShingle Humanities::General
Visual arts and music::Film
Ecocinema
Anthropocene
Southeast Asia
Refugee Studies
Environmental Humanities
Chu, Kiu-Wai
Screening vulnerability in the Anthropocene: Island of The Hungry Ghosts and the eco-ethics of refugee cinema
description Zygmunt Bauman points out that between 1950 and the early 2010s, the estimated number of displaced people, or ‘people in transition’, increased from one to 12 million, ‘but as many as 1 billion refugees-turned-exiles and ensconced in the nowhereland of camps are predicted for 2050’. ‘[Refugee] Camps ooze finality’, he writes, ‘not the finality of destination, though, but of the state of transition petrified into a state of permanence’. This global mass of exiles, refugees and asylum seekers is both confined within highly guarded detention centres (‘fencing in’), and at the same time excluded from the general public (‘fencing out’). In short, as Bauman puts it, ‘becoming an inmate of a refugee camp means eviction from the world shared by the rest of humanity’. In recent decades we have seen a growing number of film and media representations that address the conditions caused by the global refugee crisis. This essay begins with a short critique of social activist, artist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei’s ‘Refugee Series’ and proceeds to a study of Australian filmmaker Gabrielle Brady’s Island of the Hungry Ghosts (2018), a documentary set on the tiny Christmas Island, geographically situated in Southeast Asia. It explores the cinematic subjectivity of the displaced human and more-than-human beings in the Anthropocene epoch, and asks how, with such collective fatigue in the face of the global refugee situation, can we address these important issues and present them via cinematic means?
author2 School of Humanities
author_facet School of Humanities
Chu, Kiu-Wai
format Article
author Chu, Kiu-Wai
author_sort Chu, Kiu-Wai
title Screening vulnerability in the Anthropocene: Island of The Hungry Ghosts and the eco-ethics of refugee cinema
title_short Screening vulnerability in the Anthropocene: Island of The Hungry Ghosts and the eco-ethics of refugee cinema
title_full Screening vulnerability in the Anthropocene: Island of The Hungry Ghosts and the eco-ethics of refugee cinema
title_fullStr Screening vulnerability in the Anthropocene: Island of The Hungry Ghosts and the eco-ethics of refugee cinema
title_full_unstemmed Screening vulnerability in the Anthropocene: Island of The Hungry Ghosts and the eco-ethics of refugee cinema
title_sort screening vulnerability in the anthropocene: island of the hungry ghosts and the eco-ethics of refugee cinema
publishDate 2023
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168969
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