I’ve refrained myself from writing this blog, because I don’t want to have a political profile online – but the Brexit has had such a personal impact on me that I’ve been left no choice but to voice my opinion. This is a very personal blog and I hope that by writing this I can both alleviate the personal frustrations I have but also help people understand a different viewpoint.
A few months ago I was working on a music video with Riz Ahmed. Not only was I humbled by his down to earth manners, but I loved what he was rapping about in his song “Englistan”. Here was a man that was featuring in some amazing feature films, including the up and coming Star Wars, shaking hands, hugging and having conversations with anybody and everybody on the street. He tried to encapsulate what it meant to be English. We shot in the oldest Synagogue in London where I listened with awe to the history of the Jews coming to London to weave clothes in East London. He wanted to capture all the people of England from the barber shops, kebab shops, Polski skleps, the old English gent in the pub down the corner, the Hari Krishna, the various temples and churches next to each other, the list goes on. He wanted to show England’s diversity and depict how rich it was in cultures, language and history. Built on the hands of slavery, trade and colonialism I’ve watched one of the most developed and richest countries in the world turn on immigrants, the weak and the fear of ‘others’ and turn towards hatred, anger, discrimination and violence.
Riz’s other songs are just as powerful. I was moved by his his song “Benaz”, about honor killings, mostly because my ex boyfriend was also from the Middle East and I related to it. His mother lives in Greenford where during my first year at University the honor killing of Geeta Aulakh took place. It was all over the news and only a street away from where the incident took place ( I never told my mom). Going out with a Middle Eastern man, I suddenly realized the open attitudes I had grown up with had shifted when it came towards people of the Middle East. Perhaps it was because of the fear mongering created by America’s powerful propaganda on its ‘war on terrorism’. I had to be careful, people were afraid I’d become ‘islamified’. I’d start wearing a turban and run away to Iran where my passport would be taken away, and I’d become enslaved and trapped. What a load of bullshit.
Not only was I dating the son of a political refugees and a very progressive forward thinking parents, but an atheist as well. Raised in London he had grown up with Rasta’s, surrounded by little boys and girls of all descents. He told me he was the only ‘white boy’ at school because the rest of his classmates were all brown skinned or black. As the years went by I learnt more about the Middle East and Kurdistan than anybody else I knew (this was before Kurdistan became headline news). I educated myself about what Islam was. It’s origins, history and development throughout civilization. I was intrigued by the culture, music, dance and family hierarchy. It was so different to mine, I didn’t want to be part of the culture but I choose to respect and defend his background in every conversation I had.
Being adopted, growing up in nine different countries and from a political background – I am an unusual citizen of the world. Belonging to the box of ‘international students’, I grew up going to French schools then aptly moved to the American International School System after being beat up by teachers. I’m what people would call a Third Culture Kid (TCK). If you were to type in ‘third culture kid definition’ in Google, the results will be as following:
“Third culture kid (TCK) is a term used to refer to children who were raised in a culture outside of their parents’ culture for a significant part of their development years.”
I have a Dutch passport, it is the only passport I hold. My first language was Dutch and when I get stressed or angry I started thinking in Dutch. Yet ironically I don’t know what it means to be Dutch except loving Nasi Goreng, eating Belgian fries, licorice and bitterballen or always being embarrassed with the Red light district and legalization of weed turned up in conversation. Just like Riz, I started to ask myself from a young age, “what does it mean to be Dutch?” Even today, I cannot answer that question.
I cannot even pronounce the word “home” in Dutch
As a young girl I was sent to a sailing camp in Holland where I was continuously told “you’re not Dutch”. It traumatized me. I have spent at least a week or two of every year in Amsterdam my whole life and have always been told I’m Dutch by my parents.Yet I cannot even pronounce the word “home” in Dutch because I cannot say the vowels “ui” which make up the word “huis” or “home”. In International schools we had one day appropriately named ‘international day’ where children and parents were encourage to dress up in their traditional clothing, bring their traditional cuisine over and we would celebrate diversity, culture and food of different nations. In American International Schools I had to sing their national anthem during assembly. I was often one of the only Asian children at the school and if there were in my class – I couldn’t relate to them on any cultural sense. Yet when I made Dutch friends and went to their house I still felt ‘different’. My Dutch would be corrected by their parents at dinner table and I could never truly be part of Dutch culture because I hadn’t grown up with the same songs, social or cultural norms.
I grew up having to provide evidence of who I am as a person and argue with people about being Dutch
I grew up in countries were I was openly discriminated against, people used to point at me, yell ‘ching chang chong’ at me, make hand gestures where they make their eyes slanted, assumed I could use chopsticks, assumed I was good at math, assumed I was tech savy and in general made me fit into a stereotype in their head. When introducing myself to people now I almost have to sigh inwardly, because I know I’d have to start a long conversation about who or what I am. I grew up having to provide evidence of who I am as a person and argue with people about being Dutch.
London so far is one of the only cities in the world where I have lived, where I feel I don’t have to fight so much. When I say fight, I mean make an effort to prove who I am to people. Everybody is so multi-cultural and often times you don’t hear English at all. You’re continually bombarded by different languages, cultures, religion and food. It’s fantastically, rich and diverse.
Weeks before the Brexit took place I asked my Dad to get a British passport. I had now lived in London for six years and was eligible for one. England now is also the country I had lived in the longest – before that the longest country was Germany which was four years. He said not to worry and that Brexit would never happen. Fast forward to a week before Brexit and I was now in a panic state. I had started my UKVR Hackathon, I had made my film connections and network in England and didn’t want to start from the bottom again in another country. I was convinced all my English friends would vote to Remain and couldn’t stop talking about it. Not only was Brexit something I am against for the general greater good of young English citizens (worker’s rights, human rights, trade, travel etc.), but it also felt like an attack on everything I stand for as a person.
Here I was in a city where I felt like I was accepted for who I was as a person. London also represents to me a society or city in which different cultures, people and religions can co-exist and flourish. All of my films focus on equality, representing or giving a voice to ‘the other’. From women to people who are not white. I fight for them in my work and my films. I want strong female characters and I do not want only white lead actors to continuously lead the spotlight. I believe in diversity and equality, for individuals to be judged on their talent rather than their social class or skin color.So far, even with all its faults, I thought London had done a pretty good job. It’s national dish is curry, they drink tea from India and they drive German cars for crying out loud!
Perhaps it was too much too fast.
The night before the Brexit my flatmate was watching TV and I decided to go to bed early. My phone had run out of battery and I put it on charge. I remember it was a beautiful sunny day and heard my phone vibrate. The first message I read was
“Brexit is een feit. Hoe voel je je?” 06:34
which translates to “Brexit is a fact. How do you feel?” then I saw another text message from my best friend
“are you awake!!” 06:04
“we’re leaving!!!” 06.06
I started crying. I couldn’t believe it. I must have gone into shock. I was scared everything I had done was for nothing. I also realized that if people could vote to Leave that Trump was a real threat. I knew that my fears before the Brexit had become a reality. This was the beginning of the end of the European Union. It would be a domino effect and far right political parties would use this as a stepping stone to dismantle the Union. I heard the TV and sat next to my flatmate in silence as I saw David Cameron stating he was going to resign. I texted my three best friends and to my absolute shock and horror found out that one of them had voted to leave. It felt like I had just broken up with a boyfriend I didn’t know exist. That day I sat in silence and for three days I couldn’t eat or sleep properly. I went out that night to the Pheonix Artist Club with my friends in the hopes that alcohol, good company and music would cheer me up. Yet my friends are journalists, writers and in general very strong minded. We refused to speak about it till the end of the night and after one of my friends started to explain the real consequences of it to my friends I don’t know what happened to me but I broke down and started crying (I’m a pretty strong character and crying in public is NOT something I do on a regular). I had to go home.
I sought support from my friends – but they were taking drugs at music festivals or travelling the world. I saw hatred and fury on Facebook and decided not to go on any social media for the next few days. I would go visit my family and had my best friend who voted to leave coming in a few days and I didn’t know how to deal with the situation. Everybody said I was over reacting – that if you couldn’t control it there was no reason to be upset – that after the dust would settle things would be fine – it would take two years for article 50 to be enacted so don’t worry. I had never felt a whole city feel so dead before. That atmosphere at WeWork was dead, start up companies had gone bust immediately and the pound had dropped to record lows.
They want Britain to be ‘great again’.
I realize now that we are the generation after the baby boom generation and that having lived in this idyllic London was illusion and a farce. London and the other cities had developed and grown too fast. The generation of Thatcher, the urban areas where internet was impossible to find, the areas in which only white populations existed had been left behind. English people felt they were importing too much foreign produce and services. They want England to be ‘great again’. Just like Trump wants America to be ‘great again’.
What I don’t understand is how people who have lived through WWII or people who studied history cannot see the similarities. The iron curtain, the England trying to isolate itself from the problems it had created by drawing lines across borders in Asia and the Middle East, sending troops there to kill and expect no repercussions. The difference now though is that we live in a Globalized world. The Schengen agreement allows for free travel where the British have taken full advantage of buying up houses in Europe and trashing the Islands in Greece, Spain and Italy. There is still this notion in the UK that believes in its age old colonial power where it enslaved people, took resources and were deemed as ‘Great’. I understand that England wants to create its own farmland, become an industrial power once more, but such an innate reaction without doing the full political research shouldn’t be allowed to have such a huge impact let alone allow the media and political slogans outright lie to its citizens (Farage backtracking on his promise to put £350 million into the NHS). If they want change they should stand up and become that change.
It looks like history is repeating itself
The dust is trying to settle and since then I’ve slowly gotten back to social media again. The world now looks like a real life simulation of Sid Meir’s Civilization. I’ve bought the incredible book “Prisoners of Geography” by Tim Marshall, which I urge anybody to read, borrow and buy. On the last passage of the chapters on Western Europe are some very powerful paragraphs in which Marshall describes how the EU was setup after the World War.
What is now the EU was set up so that France and Germany could hug each other so tightly in a loving embrace that neither would be able to get an arm fee with which to punch the other. It has worked brilliantly and created a huge geographical space now encompassing the biggest economy in the world ( Marshall, p.102) .
His most powerful paragraphs are his last two, in which after describing how NATO is fraying and how Russia is trying to take back European countries he gives ode to the past.
In his book Of Paradise and Power the historian Robert Kagan argues that Western Euroeans live in paradise but shouldn’t seek to operate by the rules of paradise once they move out into the world of power. Perhaps, as the euro crisis diminishes and we look around at paradise, it seems inconceivable that we could go backwards; but history tells us how much things can change in just a few decades, and geography tells us that if humans do not constantly strive to overcome its ‘rules, its ‘rules’ will overcome us.
This is what Helmut Kohl meant when he warned, upon leaving the Chancellorship at Germany in 1998, that he was the last German leader to have lived through the Secod World War and thus to have experienced the horrors it wrought. In 2012 he wrote an article for Germany’s best-selling newspaper, Bild, and was clearly still haunted by the possibility that because of the financial crisis the current generation of leaders would not nurture the post-war experiment in European trust: ‘For those who didn’t live through this themselves and who especially now in the crisis are asking what benefits Europe’s unity brings, the answer despite the unprecedented European period of peace lasting more than 65 years and despite the problems and difficulties we must still overcome is: peace (Marshall, p.110-111).
It looks like history is repeating itself once more and geography, selfishness and capitalism could potentially cause another World War. This article written by Tobias Stone, really puts it into perspective as does this fantastic TED talk by Alexander Betts.
The key is in education
Education has always been the key. As you can see from my personal experiences at schools and growing up, I’ve been lucky enough to be educated by people who are open, accepting, curious and respectful of one another.
As a filmmaker I’ve been struggling with trying to find my voice and balancing money to survive as a freelancer. I find myself trapped by having been trained in drama , but unwilling to become a cog in the wheel for the sake of money and stability. My drive for making films is to have an impact, a social and political impact. I want to be able to tell a story that changes the way a human being thinks about another.
Ever since the Brexit, ever since the fear of Trump I’ve realized that I do have a responsibility to myself and the future generations. People told me this is out of my control, but a single film, a single story, a single individual can make a huge difference. All it takes is one voice and single action to make a change. I’ve been pushed more towards documentary, art, music and short form documentary and VR or 360 filming. I want to create empathy and understanding for ‘the other’. I want to help make audiences see that when it all comes down to it – we are all just human.
A great example is this video.
As most of you know I have a background in Gaming. Perhaps that’s why I’m so interested in new technology like 360 films. It’s been called the biggest empathy machine and I hope to cultivate a community of VR and AR developers for people to look into each others eyes when seeing a 360 film.
Having grown up around the world I have seen death, poverty and corruption on a scale that some people have never seen. I’ve seen it first hand. Being there and seeing it with your own eyes is different to seeing 2D pictures projected onto your tv, tablet or phone. When you look somebody in the eyes there is a sense of communication that has no language. It’s magical.
I hope to use VR and documentaries and combine them with interactivity to bridge the divide and gap between two different people. Being a filmmaker I feel responsible for helping to educate people, now so more than ever before. I hope these films will educate, I hope it will teach people to not judge somebody immediately on the basis of skin, religion, ethnicity or accent. I hope it will prevent the younger generation from being discriminated against, humiliated and attacked. Despite being told not to be upset about things that are not in my control – I think I can make a difference. Even if it is the smallest most minute difference.
If you are interested in telling a story or participating on my journey to create a difference by sharing and embracing culture I would love to speak and work with you. I want to use 360 and VR films to psychologically place people in other people’s shoes. Please contact me. Let’s spearhead this change.
Film/Gaming bits and bobs 