Film Screening: Chauka, Please Tell us the Time

Experience this powerful documentary during its limited week-long screening at Buxton Contemporary.

Filmed in secret on a mobile phone inside the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre, this documentary offers a glimpse into the experience of hundreds of asylum seekers detained indefinitely by the Australian government. The film was a collaboration between Behrouz Boochani, a journalist and detainee on Manus Island for almost seven years, and Netherlands based filmmaker Arash Kamali Sarvestani.

Named after a small bird native to the island, the chauka is known for its distinctive songs which act as a clock to local Manusian communities. Within the detention centre, chauka was also the name given to the solitary confinement unit, transporting a symbol of freedom into a place of punishment and isolation.

The film asks what it means to be surrounded by a landscape in which other beings are free to move, while human beings are deliberately confined. First-hand accounts of violence, intimidation, and psychological strain are voiced. The chauka's freedom becomes a quiet but powerful counterpoint to the fences, locked gates, and solitary cells of the detention centre.

Sessions

This 90 minute film will play on a loop throughout gallery hours, with start times at: 11:30am, 1pm & 2:30pm.

Location

Education Gallery, Level 1 of Buxton Contemporary.

About the filmmakers

Content warnings

This film contains references to violence, self-harm and suicide. It is not suitable for children.

This movie is subtitled for language translation.