Eight filmmakers are each given $10,000 and told to make a five-minute film about artists today. The clock starts ticking … | gmaddox
But like his mother, Mitch Torres, and many friends who are filmmakers, Ozies was puzzled why so many were ineligible for the federal government’s JobKeeper scheme once COVID-19 struck. “When restrictions and lockdown happened, what did people turn to?” he says. “They turned to entertainment. They turned to the arts to deal with isolation and boredom.”
Ozies’ Voxdocs film focuses on charismatic young slam poet Hani Abdile, a Somalian refugee who discovered her talent at age 16 during 11 months in detention on Christmas Island. In Sydney, she was helped by the not-for-profit organisation Word Travels, which runs festivals and events for spoken-word and hip-hop artists, poets and other storytellers.
“Three days after she was released, she performed her poetry in Sydney in front of 200 people because of Word Travels,” Ozies says. Abdile is now a published poet and is studying journalism.. “A lot of spoken-word poets are migrants, refugees and people of colour,” he says. “They gravitate to the spoken word because it’s a form of healing and dealing with a lot of pain and trauma. But what happens when you don’t support those grassroots organisations? You miss out on something special.
“I’m writing about war, I’m writing about injustice,” Abdile says during a filmed performance. “The paper and the pen are your weapon. Use it.”Credit:Alex Wu had a career boost during the pandemic when his Mandarin-language filmwon best live-action short at the virtual Sydney Film Festival in June. The son of Chinese immigrants considers himself lucky when it comes to the impact of COVID-19. “I live with two housemates, some cats as well, so I’m not completely isolated,” he says.
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