Our upcoming film screening event looks at the ways in which the manifestation of borders and the construction of the ‘stranger’ are intimately linked. Both physical and virtual boundaries, often of a dynamic nature, continue to rise, drawing lines between belonging and unbelonging, between secure and unsecure. The complex effects of contemporary borders are looked at through the lens of two films. The thrilling Children of Men (2006) by film director Alfonso Cuarón, set in 2027, tells the story of an authoritarian Britain constructing borders to tighten security in attempt to fight the threatening extinction of the human race and to respond to rising fears of ‘strangers’.
The second screening of the award-winning short film As he Lay Falling (2014) follows a Greek migrant on his challenging journey to build his own future in the Scottish Highland.
Following the two films, the director and screen writer of the featured short, Ian Waugh, will join a multidisciplinary panel with Agnes Woolley (lecturer in Contemporary Literature, Department of English, Royal Holloway) and Elizabeth Alexander (PhD researcher in Political Geography and Nationalism, Royal Holloway). The discussion will consider how film speaks to the connections between borders and strangers, and how film itself can traverse borders or even create strangeness itself.
This is a free event – no registration needed – taking place at 7PM on the 2nd of April at Jetlag Bar, 125 Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, W1t 6QB (see map).
Hoping to see you all there!
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