Border Farce

Overview

Border Farce, by Safdar Ahmed, Kazem Kazemi, Alia Ardon was made collaboratively between Safdar Ahmed, Kurdish-Iranian heavy metal guitarist Kazem Kazemi and filmmaker Alia Ardon. The video alternates between documentary storytelling, conveying Kazem’s experiences of refugee detention, and footage of musical collaboration between him and the band Hazeen (featuring Safdar Ahmed on guitar, Can Yalcinkaya on drums and Kian Dayani on bass), in convulsions of sound, performance and feeling. The film mounts a powerful critique of Australia’s border policies whilst playfully exploring an affective theory of witnessing, which is too often discarded in accounts of trauma and human rights abuses.