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7TH JAN 2009
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 Nick Broomfield’s latest film is rarely for Broomfield, not a documentary, but is nevertheless an absorbing factually-based account of what happened to the 21 Chinese cockle-pickers who died so tragically in Morecambe Bay in February 2004.
For those unfamiliar with what really took place, this is a film well worth going out of your way to see. The film begins a year before the workers found themselves in Morecambe Bay showing you through the gritty performance of Ai Qin Lin how chinese workers reluctantly leave their families in the hope of making more money in the UK only to find when they get here, that they’re instantly exploited as a cheap workforce, cutting meat for British supermarkets and working long hours for a pittance, with dodgy documents and forged permits which the British authorities conveniently turn a blind eye to.
At least that’s half the story. When even that precarious line of work falls through, there’s the promise of other work which again will be a hopeless dream until a tired and hungry group of chinese workers will find themselves scrabbling in the sand for cockles to make pennies and even that line of work there’s competition and a harsh line in the sand to be drawn under it. This is the sort of film which could make you weep.
Broomfield’s impressive wish to get the story told accurately, led to him visiting China to do painstaking research on the backgrounds of those involved. This was backed up by articles in the broadsheets by Hsiao-Hung Pai which shed more light on the tragedy. Ghosts is well worth it – it certainly opened my eyes and gave a startling insight on the world inhabited by the UK’s migrant and most exploited workforce and showed the desperate plight behind what had previously just seemed like a tragic accident. For me, it was the easily the most impressive film I saw in last November’s London Film Festival not least because its directed with a heart but also a tight grip on reality.
The title by the way refers to the term ‘ghosts’ which is coined by the chinese workers to describe the westerners in the UK who live all around them, don’t speak to them, and treat them as the lowest of the low, almost looking through them. It’s a shocking indictment of our society but one that deserves to be seen and debated by a much wider audience.
Provided by The Student Zone (United Kingdom) |
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