“Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time” is a powerful documentary shot clandestinely on a smartphone by Behrouz Boochani inside Australia’s Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea. Footage was sent electronically to Arash Kamali Sarvestani, who wove it together with interviews shot outside the detention centre to create the film.
After the film is screened, the IMRC will host a Q & A session with filmmakers Sarvestani (in person) and Boochani (remotely from Manus Island).
Words Worth will be on site selling copies of No Friend but the Mountains, Mr. Boochani’s book on his experiences.
“In 2013, Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani was illegally detained on Manus Island, a refugee detention centre off the coast of Australia.
He has been there ever since.
This book is the result. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from the Farsi.
It is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait of five years of incarceration and exile.
Winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature, No Friend But the Mountains is an extraordinary account — one that is disturbingly representative of the experience of the many stateless and imprisoned refugees and migrants around the world.”
Behrouz Boochani is an Iranian-Kurdish journalist, activist, and poet. In addition to his work on “Chauka,” he has published a memoir, “No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison,” which was written on a mobile phone using What’s App. Awards he has received for the book include the Victorian Prize for Literature, the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Nonfiction, a special award in the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards, the Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) for General non-fiction book of the year, and the Australian National Biography Award.
Arash Kamali Sarvestani is an Iranian Dutch filmmaker and video artist. He studied film at the Art University of Tehran and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. His work has been featured in numerous festivals in Europe and Iran. He currently lives and works in the Netherlands.