Animator focuses on Manus detainees

Transcript

An English film maker now living in Australia says he hopes his new animation on asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea will raise international debate on the issue of detention.

Lukas Schrank says he was inspired by an Australian government comic distributed like propaganda in Afganistan aiming to discourage people from going to Australia.

He told Jenny Meyer as he researched the Manus Island detainees plight he decided to twist the comic medium and re- write the issue from a different angle to give the refugees a global voice.

LUKAS SCHRANK: See I did about four or five months of research just really trying to understand the issue because it's so complex and there's so much misinformation as well. It's very hard to actually nail down the exact details of not only what happened on Manus in February but also just the bigger picture in terms of international law surrounding the issues and Australian law as well. So I really kind of wanted to gain an understanding of yeah, the context. Because ultimately the film deals with just two people's stories. It doesn't really address any of the kind of legality or anything surrounding the issue.

JENNY MEYER: Have you actually personally been in contact with the people who are in detention right now?

LS: Yes, I spoke to two people. I've recorded around three hours of interviews with them, that was probably in October last year. And I kind of maintain regular contact with both of them. It's quite difficult to keep in touch sometimes. But the actual interviews that are used to narrate the film are my conversations with them. I've kind of edited down the three hours of conversations into a fifteen minute short story.

JM: Will those asylum seekers actually get to see your film, have they seen it?

LS: They've been like an active part in the process so far. I show them stills from the film and I try and be transparent about how I'm editing the actual voice overs. Because obviously condensing three hours down to into fifteen minutes that's a lot of editing. So I want to make sure that I'm still retaining the truth behind those stories as well. They are an active part in it and I will definitely show them the film when it's finished. I mean in some ways I'm kind of treating them like they're my audience. They need to be kind of happy with the film before it goes out there really so yeah, they're definitely an active part in the film.

JM: Are you actually still working on the film? When do you expect the whole thing will be finished and be able to be seen by everybody?

LS: The crowd funding is actually coming through later on today I think. So we've just received funding. And the whole film will take around six months to make and we're kind of nearing the last quarter of that now.

JM: And you're doing all the animation yourself, are you?

LS: So I'm working with a team. There's about five or six of us working kind of all around the world. There's two of us in Australia, there's some people working on it in India, the Philippines, and Romania as well. So each person has a very niche job. Like I have one guy just doing trees and sky. And there's one guy just doing characters. And I'm kind of putting everything together and working on the environments as well.

JM: Once it's finished and publicly available, what are your hopes for the film?

LS: I'm aiming to challenge people's preconceptions a little bit. I think with these projects sometimes there's a danger of them already being exposed to people they already know and already share the same viewpoint. That's why I chose animation as a way to try and tell these stories. Because it really has the ability to kind of reach out to a wider audience. I hope to just really make people aware of the issue. And even within Australia, there's people who have contacted me saying 'I had no idea any of this stuff was going on' until they saw bits of the film in the trailer. Which kind of surprised me but I think there's a lot of people out there that don't really this whole story. And I think internationally it's also gaining a lot of interest as well as these kind of problems are shared in Europe.

Lukas Schrank says he hopes the film called 'Nowhere Line: Voices from Manus Island' will be available on-line and he would also like to enter it on the festival circuit.