Storytelling potential of creative documentary – Hamedullah: The Road Home -‘One Stop Doc’ Workshop
One Stop Doc @ Counterpoints Arts is running a workshop at the forthcoming Platforma Conference in Manchester on 1 November – details here. We’re also planning to run a longer workshop with Sue Clayton in London – dates to be confirmed.
A conversation with filmmaker Sue Clayton on the storytelling potential of creative documentary in humanising the consequences of asylum policy
We know little about what happens to unaccompanied minors who ‘come of age at 18’ and are unceremoniously deported back to their country of origin. Refugee agencies and advocates such as the UNHCR, together with journalists and filmmakers continuously struggle to gain access to crucial on-the-ground knowledge, given current UK Home Office restrictions and prohibitions on accessing or collecting relevant data.
Join us for a discussion with film director and screenwriter, Sue Clayton, whose film Hamedullah: The Road Home powerfully chronicles a now commonplace journey through the eyes of 21 year-old Hamedullah Hassany. Hamedullah originally fled Afghanistan as a young teenager. He was deported from Canterbury several years’ later barefoot and handcuffed.
Having built a relationship with Hamedullah, Clayton covertly films the UK Border Agency deportation, giving him a small camera before his departure. Reversing the storytelling dynamic and against all odds, Hamedullah continues to chronicle his everyday life when back in Afghanistan, out of which emerges this co-creation and hugely important story – one which tactically works with and against the grain of the classic ‘road movie’.
Screening excerpts and unpacking the rich production history behind Clayton’s film, we explore the potential role documentary and new modes of screen storytelling play in putting a human face on asylum policy. We further probe how documentary film can move audiences to critical action, while also enabling legal advocates to render visible the frighteningly real conditions faced by young asylum seekers forcefully sent back to so-called ‘safe’ countries.
In featuring Hamedullah: The Road Home as a critical case study, we examine how documentary film, across its various production stages, can be used as a creative and effective public campaign tool engaging diverse actors and audiences – from ordinary filmgoers, legal activists, advocates, public policy decision makers and educators amongst others, to think beyond the veil of statistics and increasingly brutal headlines.
