Documenting Migration
How do you get it right?
IN AI WEIWEI’S 2017 documentary Human Flow, the Chinese exile undertakes the ambitious project of showcasing the global refugee crisis. The film, shot in 23 countries, aims at showing the enormous scale of refugees and migrants across the globe, numbering, at the time of the film’s release, upwards of 65 million people. Displaced by war, climate change and political persecution, people worldwide are forced to abandon their homes in a desperate search for better lives.
In some ways, an attempt to be the be-all and end-all of refugee documentaries, Human Flow represents the impossible challenge of representing the scope of migration across the earth. Moving from Myanmar to Palestine to the United States, different people are lumped together by their common predicament. Drone shots flying high above the people show them as ants or small streams of movement, an almost aquatic mass moving towards the promise of greener pastures. The film mixes talking-head interviews with on-the-ground reporting; it tries to embrace the shared human experience but structurally elevates some lives above others as a consequence of its more classical documentary form.
As America and its allies withdrew from Afghanistan earlier this year, many watched live on TV and social media the horrific images of people trying to escape the country. People shared
