Laura Waddington In 2002, Laura Waddington spent months in the fields around Sangatte Red Cross camp, France with Afghan and Iraqi refugees, who were trying to cross the channel tunnel to England. Filmed at night with a small video camera, the figures lit only by the distant car headlights on the motorways, Border is a personal account of the refugees plight and the police violence that followed the camps closure. Directors statement In the days, if you wandered along the motorways and the wastelands, you could see the refugees everywhere: waiting on the roadside or headed to the port and the freight trains. They travelled in twos or threes or sometimes in groups of twenty or thirty. At night, Id walk along the roads with them. It took two or three hours to reach the spots on the channel tunnel fence, where theyd start to cut the wire. Then came the arrests and the police bus back to the camp. A few hours later, theyd re-emerge and the perverse game of cat and mouse would start again. Most of the refugees were from Iraq and Afghanistan. Theyd taken six or seven months to get to France, paying traffickers to smuggle them in trucks across Iran, Turkey and the Balkans. Many had nothing left but the clothes they were standing in. In their countries, theyd been teachers, university professors, medical students, and bricklayers. Some men died in the tunnel, others had their arms or legs cut off by the moving trains. I remember, one boy who lost his leg was out on the road, the week he was released from the hospital, trying to escape again. The months passed in limbo. I couldnt believe we had just left them there, as if our backs were turned to them. Laura Waddington 2002
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 13:30:13 +0000
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