This month’s Spotlight was prepared by Ifigeneia Gianne, an undergraduate student at Bard College who is majoring in Anthropology and Theater. As an international student from Greece, Ifigeneia is no stranger to issues of language and culture. As part of her studies, she has had the opportunity to closely analyze a recent film that introduces viewers to the experiences of refugees working as interpreters in one of the largest refugee camps in the world.
Introduction
The Bridge is a fictional short film, made and produced by a collective of refugees who work as interpreters in Kakuma refugee camp in northwest Kenya (796.3 km away from Nairobi, Kenya’s capital). The film showcases the significance of interpreters in the community, something that is reflected neither in their working conditions nor in their wages. The narrative is structured around two main characters who are interpreters and reside in Kakuma refugee camp. Viewers learn about the challenges interpreters face by watching the two characters’ lives – lack of adequate transportation; delays in payments for their work; having to translate emotionally charged testimonies that relate to their own personal trauma, causing nightmares and distress; lack of a space to sit down (we always see the interpreters sitting outside throughout the film when they are not actively working). The aforementioned reality leads the interpreters to go on a strike to demand better wages and respectful working conditions. In the end, they do not achieve the changes they were hoping for.
Throughout the film, the audience comes to understand the power dynamics between the interpreters and those for whom they work, as well as the different discourses that are used by the interpreters when expressing their demands, and also by the people in charge when presenting their final decision to not provide additional pay or comfort. On the one hand, the interpreters seem to be emotionally involved and invested in their job, and on the other hand, their employers seem to recite a bureaucratic discourse that denies how deeply personal this work is. When it comes to the overall themes of language and justice, The Bridge provides its own interpretation of justice: by simply presenting the polyphony of Kakuma refugee camp and of its people, the film explores the notions of justice conducted through the interpreters, and the injustices they do not seem to be able to escape.
I had the chance to conduct a group interview with four persons crucial to the production of The Bridge. Kamoso Jean Bertrand, residing in Kakuma refugee camp, originally from Burundi, and the film’s director; Mulki Muhamed Ali, from Somalia, responsible for sound recording, post-production editing, financial supervision, as well as making sure people were signing their contracts and consent forms; Adam M. Bashar, from the Darfur region of Sudan, the film’s videographer, logistics manager, and responsible for communication between the crew and the actors; and Bard Professor Laura Kunreuther, an anthropologist who has been conducting research with this team for years, which influenced the making of the film – and who also acted in the film as a fictive humanitarian officer called of Sonia, served as the continuity person, and arranged skills labs and discussions with filmmakers before, during, and after production. From the very beginning of our discussion, it was clear that this was a collaborative project, and that everyone was working together on multiple aspects of the film. This was evident when I asked the interviewees to describe their roles in the production since everyone had a specific task assigned to them, but each also mentioned that they assisted in different aspects of the production team. As Laura said, “This was a first film for all of us.”
I first came across the film while participating as an intern in Professor Kunreuther’s course “Invisible Labor and the Making of Culture: Global Culture Brokers.” As an international student myself, originally from Athens, Greece and now studying Anthropology and Theater at Bard College, I have always been interested in the concept of cultural brokers; the people who come to be an amalgamation of different cultures, and languages, and who act as a cross-reference point between different places. Being able to hear students from all over the world pondering and reflecting on the film, having the opportunity to rewatch it on my own time, and, finally, conducting the interview with some of the people who dreamt about it and made it possible, enabled me to see the film from different perspectives, and understand its multifaceted relationship with core the core themes of language, culture, and justice.
The Bridge’s different languages
At the beginning of the film, the audience learns that there are an estimated forty languages actively spoken in Kakuma refugee camp. However, only five languages are spoken in the film (English, Kiswahili, Somali, Kirundi, and French), which made me curious about the process of writing the script and selecting which languages to use. In terms of the scriptwriting process, Kamoso mentioned that they were all taking a film class in the camp, and after the class completion, the script facilitator asked each of them to write a story. The facilitator chose the best one, and the team turned it into a script, which, according to Kamoso, is just a formula if you already have the basis of a good story. “We wanted the film to be in English,” Mulki said, but also to involve the languages that minorities within the camp speak such as French, to highlight that interpreters speak so many different languages. Adam added that in Kakuma camp there are refugees from over twenty-four different countries, and since their vision was to screen the film in every place possible, English felt like the best vehicle to do so. Kamoso added, “it’s obvious that using English and Kiswahili was a must,” but the actors were not chosen based on the languages they spoke. After the final auditions and casting, they edited the script to accommodate the actors chosen according to the languages that they could speak. As someone who has been attempting to write scripts in English, and whose native language is not English, I have always felt an alienation from my work, and an emotional separation between what I want my characters to express and the words I end up giving them in English. Hence, I felt that there was more to be said about writing in English, especially in such an emotionally involved process, and I asked them to think about it a bit more. Adam said that writing in English required a lot of concentration and a lot of revision. Laura’s role was to make sure that the script and subtitles had no grammatical mistakes, since, as Adam said, “We use a language that does not belong to us. We have to use English, although it is the colonization language, because we are looking at the whole world.”
Inevitably the conversation led to a broader discussion around the Hub’s major themes: language, culture, and justice. I asked the team to reflect with me on those topics as a conclusion to our discussion. “This film is from a multicultural and multinational environment – we are staying in a refugee camp which accommodates people from different cultures, and different languages,” Kamoso said. “If we are forty, we speak forty languages and forty cultures. Through language barriers, when we come together and create a different language that brings all of us together.” “The film was a culture that we created and it brought all of us together,” Adam added. Language and culture felt interconnected for everyone involved in the production of The Bridge. Although the language barriers may seem insurmountable, by recognizing them and consciously moving past them, the opportunity for a new culture across languages emerges.
The film’s relation to justice
“The hardest thing to achieve in the world is justice, and that will never happen. Everything will be done, possibly, but justice is impossible. That’s what I’ve come to learn about it. Justice is always incomplete. Worldwide,” Adam said when asked about the film’s relationship to justice. Kamoso hesitated a bit, and added: “I don’t know if I can say there’s no justice. I remember something that Professor Laura told us, that there’s no justice anywhere. There’s no justice actually.” Laura shared that, for her, one of the best things that this film does is how it talks about justice – by showing how people attempt to speak in their own language, when forced into an environment where they don’t speak the local language. “On one level it [the film] is about attempting to provide justice for other refugees through interpreters,” she said. “But because the film focuses on interpreters, it also focuses on the injustices of the system in which interpreters work – where the attempt to provide justice for other refugees is sacrificed by the unjust working conditions under which interpreters work.”
The making of The Bridge
Where did the original motivations and inspiration to make such a film come from? According to Kamoso, during their research sessions with Laura, they were all writing diaries about their work experiences as interpreters, and watching other short films together around the topic of the interpreters’ and translators’ role in the Kakuma refugee camp. This led to the idea of turning the findings of their research into a film. As Adam added, a film felt more relevant as a medium since most people nowadays watch films instead of reading books or newspapers.
Naturally, this question arises: since the film came as a result of research conducted at Kakuma, in what ways is it fictional? “The reason why we chose to make the film fiction is because of the safety of people and it was our first feeling,” Mulki said. Adam then added that this was a decision made to maintain the safety of both the actors and the filmmakers. Kamoso shared that he had heard a lot of people pondering about why the film was categorized as fiction. He took a moment to think about it and then added, “maybe it’s because it talks about something which exists.” Although the reason behind this decision was to protect the people involved, a slightly knowledgeable audience will understand the people and organizations that are implied in the film, and exactly for that reason, it feels real. The Bridge is a fictional short film not because it talks about something that it is entirely imagined, then, but as Mulki notes, because it was the best way for the team “to pass the message without having someone’s future affected.”
To find actors, the team posted an audition notice throughout the Kakuma camp. Mulki mentioned that this was a moment when a lot of camp interpreters seemed impressed by the work the research team was doing with Prof. Kunreuther. The fact that someone wanted to make a film to advocate for them made them want to be a part of it. Despite their interest in the film, most of the interpreters who acted in the film did not play the roles of interpreters.
There were a few technical challenges during the production of The Bridge, the biggest being losing most of their footage after completing the first cut of the film due to an issue with the hard drive on which they had been storing their files. Adam, as the communication manager, added that there were also some issues in terms of scheduling and location, such as an instance when someone’s generator was too loud, and they needed to ask the owner to shut it down. The owner agreed but gave them a specific time frame.
I was also curious to know whether the people in Kakuma refugee camp got to see the film, and what their reactions were. Kamoso shared with me that they screened the film in the camp after its completion. Kamoso realized during the screening process that The Bridge works as a “psychotherapy tool” since “once a person is acting or narrating the issues that they are going through, it raises some emotional issues” and it becomes “part of healing.” For Kamoso, “that’s one thing that this film has actually done.”
My conversation with Adam, Kamoso, Mulki, and Laura shed light on multiple aspects of making The Bridge. I feel that it has made visible and audible to a wider audience the challenges faced by interpreters who work for humanitarian organizations, while also being refugees themselves and hoping to serve their fellow community members. This collective filmmaking effort emphasized the significance of protecting each other and regaining ownership of their own stories. Despite the many challenges, The Bridge successfully put faces to the facts, bringing to life the real stories and highlighting the human element in the struggle for justice and better working conditions for interpreters in Kakuma refugee camp.
Filming The Bridge in Kakuma Refugee Camp
To learn more and provide assistance
The filmmakers now plan to produce a second film around the broader structure of work called ‘incentive labor’ in which interpreters and many other people residing in Kakuma refugee camp engage. They already have a treatment and have begun some filming, but accessing the necessary resources and film equipment remains difficult. A Go Fund Me campaign has been created to assist this enterprising group, which you can contribute to using the following link: https://gofund.me/c24f635d. Every donation matters and will go toward this film initiative.
Readers can also learn more about The Bridge and watch a trailer on the film’s website (https://osunhubs.bard.edu/advocacy/the-bridge/). The full film may be viewed free of charge here (https://filmfreeway.com/TheBridge580). Please contact the filmmakers at [email protected] or Laura Kunreuther at [email protected], if you would like to screen the film at your institution with a Q & A with the makers.
The Bridge, and parts of the research upon which the film was based, received support from the Open Society University Network, National Endowment for the Humanities, Council of American Overseas Research Centers, and Wenner-Gren Foundation.