9/9/2023 0 Comments Freedom homesOtherwise it will just kill you from the inside.”Īzimitabar and Bandesh first came to his home in April 2021, to paint in the studio, to swim in the ocean, to touch and feel the natural world once they were free. “ that to be strong you need to hold on to ideas around love and hope. “I realised just how incredible they were,” he says. He made Freedom Is Beautiful in partnership with Amnesty International, after meeting both men in 2021, while they were still in hotel detention. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. He says he had to fight to have a window opened “a tiny bit. “My life was a narrow room and a corridor,” he tells the Guardian.īandesh was medevaced from Manus in July 2020, and would spend 17 months between two facilities on the mainland. From November 2019, already suffering from severe depression, PTSD and asthma, he lived without sunshine or fresh air for 23 hours a day, in a room that faced a concrete wall. When hundreds of refugees were brought to Australia on the advice of doctors, hotels were used as alternative places of detention – and Azimitabar found himself in another kind of prison. My survival is art and art is my resistance … I fight with my art.” For Azimitabar, painting in detention took away the pain. Speaking to the Guardian, Bandesh talks of the political songs, poetry and 150 artworks he created in offshore detention: “It was a weapon against cruelty. It bears witness to how these men used music and art as resistance. The film melds phone footage capturing scenes from Manus Island with contemporary footage shot around Australia, as Azimitabar and Bandesh remade their lives. ‘My life was a narrow room and a corridor’: Azimitabar attempted to sue the Australian government for its use of hotel detention.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |