GHOSTS

UK, 2006, 96 minutes, Colour.
Ai Quin Lin.
Directed by Nick Broomfield.

Nick Broomfield has been making hard-hitting, insightful and controversial documentaries since the 1970s. They include a range of topics, although they tend to focus on significant personalities. He is probably best known for his films on the serial killer Aileen Wuornos’s, but also made documentaries on musicians, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, Biggie Smalls and Tupak Shakur. But, he has always been interested in the social dimensions of the cultures in which his subjects lived and has explored South African apartheid twice with Eugene Terre’Blanche?.

In the late 1980s he tried his hand at a fiction film, Diamond Skulls, about the upper classes in Britain. It was not particularly successful. Now he tries again with Ghosts. This time he has been very successful.

Ghosts is what the Chinese illegal immigrants into Britain call the locals, a generic term for the white inhabitants of the British isles, but becoming more derogatory as the migrants experience the harshness of the people and the work, that Britain is not the fulfilment of their dreams.

The starting point of the film is the death of 23 Chinese workers, gathering cockles in Morecombe Bay and caught by the rising tide in February 2004. The prologue shows the beginning of this disaster and comes back to it at the end, highlighting the local hostility to the Chinese which resulted in fights and bashings and led to the Chinese deciding to work at night – and being caught by the tides.

The central character is a young Chinese mother who is persuaded by the plausible spiel of rogue agents that within a few years she will be able to earn enough money to return home. The device of a map for the migrant journey from China shows a group going via some of the old Soviet republics to Russia and then south through eastern Europe across to Calais, hiding by night, walking, crushed in a container crossing the English channel.

While the narrative is always interesting, Broomfield capitalises on his documentary abilities to film in such a way that we feel that we are right there, a naturalistic approach of frame design, camerawork and clear colour photography that looks completely real. The crowded flats, the agency offices, the meatworks, the vegetable gardens, the supermarkets. This makes the story completely authentic.

But, we also see everything from the young woman’s point of view, listen to the bully Chinese boss in England through her ears, especially as he proposes alternate work in the sex industry. At times, she prays in despair. At other times she has the consolation of ringing her mother.

Broomfield offers a final challenge to governments. He has no solutions but wants to offer a real picture of the plight of the illegals and their exploitation.

Ghosts can be seen along with a number of recent films about migration, illegals and crime: Dirty Pretty Things, In This World, Promised Land, And My Name is Justine, Separate Parts.

1.The impact of the film? Topical? Social concerns? Justice issues? For the United Kingdom? For China? Universal message?

2.The work of Nick Broomfield as a documentary director? His perspectives? Social concern? Focus on individuals in difficult circumstances?

3.The blend of narrative and documentary style? The effect on the audience, identifying with the characters, the story, the issues?

4.The opening in China, the beauty of the locations, the glimpse of the family, the feeling, the needs of the family, economic, the mother and the child, the grandmother? The phone calls from England? The end and Ai Quin Lin’s return to China?

5.The travel of the illegal migrants, the visual device of the map, the range of countries travelled in, moving through Uzbekistan to Russia, through the Balkan states? The hard journey? In the dark? Walking, in the container? The arrival in the UK and the brutal treatment? The agents and their spiels to unsuspecting victims? The agent in China, the promise of a lot of money? The money and the deposit? The immediate demand in England for the rest?

6.Issues of economic migrants in the world, illegals, the role of the agents, double-dealing agencies, the locals and their reaction, the giving of jobs to the illegals, providing false documents, crowding them in flats? The Chinese bosses, the exploitation? Suggesting the sex options? The amount of money received? Payments of rent etc, transport? Taxes?

7.The Morecambe Bay opening, audience knowledge of what happened in February 2004, the work collecting the cockles, the danger, the rising tide? The ending on Morecambe Bay again, the hard work after going north, the locals and the fight, the racism, the difficult work, the attack and putting the cockles in the soup? The night work, the group playing cards in the minibus, the tide rising, trying to stand on the bus for safety, decisions to swim? The deaths?

8.The portrait of Ai Quin Lin, in her family, the baby, the need for money, the hard decision to leave the baby and go to England, listening to the agent, hopes, agreement to give the money, the hardships of travel, the insults on arrival, the harsh experience? Mr Lin and his suggestions about massage and making money? The house, the crowd, the others in the house? The agents and the work? Paying for the false document? The factory, the hours, the smells? The friendly girl, the photo of her baby? Her phoning home? The issue of payment, the taxes? Working in the vegetable gardens? Social life, shopping in the supermarket? The harsh plight, her prayer to God and her despair? The raid on the flat? The decision to go north, her working collecting the cockles? Her being saved from the water?

9.The glimpse of the other characters, crammed in the flat, their hopes, the man borrowing money from lenders, Mr Lin’s girlfriend, sexual relationship, her walking out?

10.The reference of the title, the Chinese calling the British ghosts? Attitudes, the British agencies, the girl accepting the gifts knowing the documents were false, the owners of the various workplaces? The manager of the flat, demanding more money, the crowding? The neighbours and their criticism? The British attack on the Chinese in Morecambe Bay? The police and the raids?

11.Mr Lin, his running of the racket, stances, with Ai Quin Lin, with his girlfriends, the jobs, payment for the rent, getting the documents, his control, his spurning of the neighbours, the raid, his being forced to go north, his being bashed by the locals?

12.The interest of the narrative? The importance of the documentary representation? The challenge to the audience about justice, compassion? The role of government? Possible solutions?