Reflections on Hendrix's 'Stranger in Paradise'
On Sunday 14th October, I was lucky enough to attend the final screening of Bristol Radical Film Festival held this last weekend at the Trinity Centre. When one of the organisers introduced Guido Hendrix’s 2016 documentary Stranger in Paradise, his hopes for the audience to “enjoy the film” seemed misleading, given the complex and at times deeply unsettling screening that would follow.
As a project, the Bristol Radical Film Festival prides itself on sharing “socially and politically engaged documentary and fiction films from around the world”. Stranger in Paradise opens with a prologue, a fast-paced collage of black & white archival clips, with a voiceover offering a brief whirlwind explanation as to the development of humanity and civilisations, coming to an abrupt end with the arrival at the idea of mass migration. What follows is a clearly structured three-part film, blurring the boundaries between fiction and documentary as a ‘teacher’ invites newly arrived refugees into a classroom to participate in an exercise and seminar style discussion surrounding the hopes, possibilities and plausibilities of their success in Europe. In the first part Valentin Dhaenens, in his role as teacher, ventriloquizes the right-wing anti-immigration rhetoric, reeling familiar arguments as to the economic drain that mass immigration subjects Europe to, insisting that the migrants return home, help each other out and start their own welfare state. The frankness and sheer cruelty of Dhaenens’ approach and attitude towards the migrants makes for uncomfortable viewing, as the exercises’ participants eagerly try to justify their plight, convince their teacher of their willingness to work and get him to see beyond the limits of a refugee as a financial burden.
Moving to Act 2, we are met with a new group of hopeful migrants and a rather different approach from Dhaenens. Adopting a more celebratory stance, the teacher praises the courage of the refugees in fleeing their country and in making the long journey to Europe, emphasising their potential and contribution to society and debunking economic myths surrounding their impact. Dhaenens explains how Europe’s wealth is built on their colonial past at the expense of non-European countries, and suggests that Europe now has a duty and an opportunity to give something back, arguments that are met humbly and with agreement by the participants.
Act 3 moves beyond the popular right and left wing rhetoric to follow the style of a typical interview process that is used to determine which migrants and asylum seekers are deemed worthy of attaining permanent residency. In this section, the viewers learn alongside the migrants the harsh reality of the situation, as we see the interviewees subject to an unsettling interrogation, in which the plausibility and accuracy of their stories are called into question.
A film rarely seems to so explicitly offer such a balanced stance to a topic - especially one as polemic as immigration - yet crucially Hendrix’s film seemed to leave Bristol’s audience begging for further discussion in order for the film to achieve its full potential. Trinity Centre’s low-fi screening facilitated an easy transition into an open and comfortable discussion following the film, in which two representatives from Bristol City of Sanctuary extended the debate. In discussing what particularly they found challenging or problematic about the film, the speakers crucially situated the film in the context of Bristol’s refugee action, and offered the audience instructive advice as to what as individuals they can do to show solidarity with Bristol’s refugees and further the cause.
Chloe Budd