Closing night

Sunday, October 20
︎ 18:00-21:00
︎ Theatre at MAC Birmingham

KORYO SARAM AND CHINESE LIVERPUDLIANS: STORIES OF EAST ASIAN FORCED DISPLACEMENT IN THE USSR AND THE UK

THE UNDESIRABLES by Hester Yang (19 mins) 
THREE BORDERS by Alisa Berger (55 mins)
+ Q&A (60 mins)

Screening Rights Film Festival is bringing the latest socially engaged and formally innovative cinema from the Global South to audiences in the West Midlands. The closing night of its 10th-anniversary edition, subtitled Double Bill and aimed at fostering South-to-South solidarity, features The Undesirables, Hester Yang’s short about the Chinese Liverpudlians, alongside Three Borders, Alisa Berger’s mid-length essay about the Soviet Koreans.

THE UNDESIRABLES
Hester Yang / 2022 / UK / 19’ / English with English subtitles

Hester Yang’s short film The Undesirables unpacks the traumatic and long-classified history of the Chinese men who were working as dockers in Liverpool during World War II. When the war ended, they were deemed no longer necessary, made redundant, and deported to China overnight, leaving behind families and children they had fathered in Liverpool. Similarly to some of the other works of artistic research at this year’s Screening Rights — Dancing Palestine and Sebastia Disagreement — The Undesirables was realised as part of an MA project (specifically, an MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography that the filmmaker undertook at the University of the Arts London). It organically combines extensive archival work and interviews with the descendants of the sailors, conducted by Yang in Liverpool, alongside images of water as metaphors for seafaring, migration, and displacement. The film has toured extensively across the UK, including screenings in Liverpool (Open Eye Gallery), Manchester (esea contemporary), and London (the New Contemporaries show at the Camden Arts Centre), and is now being presented in Birmingham for the first time.

THREE BORDERS
Alisa Berger / 2017 / Germany / 55’ / English, Russian, German with English subtitles

In her hypnotic, labyrinthine mid-length film essay Three Borders, Alisa Berger, a Germany-based filmmaker of Korean and Jewish descent, tackles her intricate family history that spans multiple countries and the turbulent history of the 20th century. Intriguingly for this screening, Berger recounts the story of her mother, Tatjana, who is Koryo-saram — a Soviet Korean. In 1937, Koryo-saram were forcibly displaced from the Far East of the russian SSR to Central Asia via the Silk Road as part of a secret racist operation launched by Stalin’s government, which was rearranging multiple populations and indigenous peoples due to perceived ‘anti-Soviet activities’. Realised in monochrome and subdued colours, and utilising material archives and oral testimonies, Three Borders highlights the plurality of diasporic experiences and the lesser-known, suppressed narratives of racialised displacement in the USSR. Originally conceived as part of a larger media installation, it is being shown in the UK for the first time.

The screening will be accompanied by a panel discussion, featuring guest curators Misha Zakharov, Fangyuan Zhao, and Qinghan Chen, as well as the filmmakers Hester Yang and Alisa Berger. 

Hester Yang is a London-based filmmaker, photographer, and emerging curator with a particular interest in alternative means of documentary storytelling.

Alisa Berger is a filmmaker of Korean and Jewish descent, who was born in Dagestan, raised in Ukraine, and is now based in Germany. She creates films and installations, often through a collaborative process, which are accompanied by, created, altered, or destroyed during performative interventions.