Assembling 'Samira' and 'Travel': affecting sexual humanitarianism through experimental ethnofictional filmmaking (Key-note lecture by Nicola Mai)
Samira is a 27 minutes two-screen ethnofictional installation presenting the life history of Karim, an Algerian migrant man selling sex as a transvestite at night in Marseille. Karim left Algeria as a young man as his breasts started developing as a result of taking hormones. He was granted asylum in France as a transgender woman, Samira. Twenty years later, as his father is dying and he is about to become the head of the family Samira surgically removes her breasts and marries a woman in order to get a new passport allowing him to return to Algeria to assume his new role.
Travel is 27 minutes two-screen ethnofictional installation presenting the life history of Joy, a Nigerian migrant woman selling sex in the Bois de Vincennes in Paris. Joy left Nigeria in order to help her family after the death of her father. She knew that she was going to sell sex before leaving, but was unaware of the hard working and life condition she would have had to face in France. After having endured several months of exploitation, Joy decides to reinterpret her story of migration as one of trafficking. With the help of an association she obtains humanitarian protection, but in order to keep helping her family and live her life she keeps selling sex at night.
Samira and Travel are part of the Emborders art-science project questioning the effectiveness and scope of humanitarian initiatives targeting migrant sex workers and sexual minority asylum seekers. In order to get their rights recognised and avoid deportation migrant women, men and transgender people re-present their life histories and perform their subjectivities according to stereotypically sex-gendered canons of victimhood and humanitarian repertoires.
The stories of Karim and Joy are presented by juxtaposing the multiple versions and narrations of the self emerging in different situations, relationships and settings: the ethnographic observation in the street, the medical visit, the interview with the OFPRA case adjudicator (French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless People), shopping in the city centre, sitting at a café next to the street market. The two screens on which the two ethnofiction develop try to embody the concept of biographical border by representing the dualisms and normativities that fragment and aggregate subjectivities in relation to research and humanitarian initiatives.
Each situation highlights contradictory or coherent aspects of the subjectivity and history of Karim and Joy. However, the aim of the project is not to demonstrate his lack of authenticity or that he lies. Each version of the self presented by the two protagonists is authentic, proving that every subjectivity is incoherent and that the real privilege is not to have to be verified, evaluated, recognised or believed in relation to the biographical borders that are enforced by humanitarian protection.
The Emborders filmmaking/research project gathers and analyses the migration, asylum and work experiences of real people, which will be performed by actors to protect the identities of the original interviewees and to embody the performance of their self-representations through interviews.
Affect, embodiment and performativity play a key role in the phenomenological (re)production of credibility in humanitarian settings. The project aims to produce an epistemological and artistic intervention on the inherently fictional nature of any narration of the self in the context of humanitarian borders. By using actors to reproduce real people and real life histories, the project problematises what constitutes a credible and authentic reality in scientific, filmic and humanitarian terms.
Trailer of Samira: https://vimeo.com/84704860
Samira is a 27 minutes two-screen ethnofictional installation presenting the life history of Karim, an Algerian migrant man selling sex as a transvestite at night in Marseille. Karim left Algeria as a young man as his breasts started developing as a result of taking hormones. He was granted asylum in France as a transgender woman, Samira. Twenty years later, as his father is dying and he is about to become the head of the family Samira surgically removes her breasts and marries a woman in order to get a new passport allowing him to return to Algeria to assume his new role.
Travel is 27 minutes two-screen ethnofictional installation presenting the life history of Joy, a Nigerian migrant woman selling sex in the Bois de Vincennes in Paris. Joy left Nigeria in order to help her family after the death of her father. She knew that she was going to sell sex before leaving, but was unaware of the hard working and life condition she would have had to face in France. After having endured several months of exploitation, Joy decides to reinterpret her story of migration as one of trafficking. With the help of an association she obtains humanitarian protection, but in order to keep helping her family and live her life she keeps selling sex at night.
Samira and Travel are part of the Emborders art-science project questioning the effectiveness and scope of humanitarian initiatives targeting migrant sex workers and sexual minority asylum seekers. In order to get their rights recognised and avoid deportation migrant women, men and transgender people re-present their life histories and perform their subjectivities according to stereotypically sex-gendered canons of victimhood and humanitarian repertoires.
The stories of Karim and Joy are presented by juxtaposing the multiple versions and narrations of the self emerging in different situations, relationships and settings: the ethnographic observation in the street, the medical visit, the interview with the OFPRA case adjudicator (French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless People), shopping in the city centre, sitting at a café next to the street market. The two screens on which the two ethnofiction develop try to embody the concept of biographical border by representing the dualisms and normativities that fragment and aggregate subjectivities in relation to research and humanitarian initiatives.
Each situation highlights contradictory or coherent aspects of the subjectivity and history of Karim and Joy. However, the aim of the project is not to demonstrate his lack of authenticity or that he lies. Each version of the self presented by the two protagonists is authentic, proving that every subjectivity is incoherent and that the real privilege is not to have to be verified, evaluated, recognised or believed in relation to the biographical borders that are enforced by humanitarian protection.
The Emborders filmmaking/research project gathers and analyses the migration, asylum and work experiences of real people, which will be performed by actors to protect the identities of the original interviewees and to embody the performance of their self-representations through interviews.
Affect, embodiment and performativity play a key role in the phenomenological (re)production of credibility in humanitarian settings. The project aims to produce an epistemological and artistic intervention on the inherently fictional nature of any narration of the self in the context of humanitarian borders. By using actors to reproduce real people and real life histories, the project problematises what constitutes a credible and authentic reality in scientific, filmic and humanitarian terms.
Trailer of Samira: https://vimeo.com/84704860