In our contemporary societies, the nuanced experiences of migrants and the complex decisions they make tend to be understood and represented according to reductive humanitarian and neoliberal categories differentiating ‘innocent’ victims from ‘free’ (economic) agents.
This reductive semplification is complicit with a repressive governance of migration filtering away deserving refugees from undeserving (economic) migrants, which leaves the increasing inequalities and conflicts fueling migration unaddressed.
Mainstream documentaries and fiction films play a crucial role in the global distribution of stereotypical categories of victimhood that end up justifying repressive migration governance. They tend not to reflect the complex experiences of migrants, while offer simplistic solutions to complex issues without challenging the structural and causal factors of inequality.
It is in order to contribute to reversing these cultural and social processes that I decided to become a filmmaker: to put the experiences, priorities and needs of migrants at the centre of research findings, policies and representations concerning them.
Inspired by Jean Rouch’s ethnofictions, I developed a participatory, co-creative and collaborative filmmaking methodology transcending the distinction between fiction and non-fiction, participation and observation, knowledge and emotions.
The films I directed adopt co-creative and participatory methods ensuring that its protagonists own the terms of their representation. They aim to elevate the voices of migrants while also protecting their identities from further stigmatisation and criminalisation, when they so wish.
To reconcile the ethical imperative of protecting migrant film co-creators from further stigmatisation with their desire to express themselves directly, we developed, together, a range of filmic solutions including: filters and masks, asking actors to portray real people and situations, and co-writing fictional characters and stories.
All of my films so far have focussed on the experiences, priorities and needs of migrants sex workers, Through co-creative and participatory methods including ethnofictions my films challenge prevailing humanitarian representations of all migrant sex workers as trafficked while addressing the complex experiences of exploitation and autonomy of the people involved.
NORMAL (2012 – 48min)
Normal – real stories from the sex industry portrays the experiences of self-affirmation and of exploitation of cis and trans migrants (including a cis male minor and cis male agents) working in the sex industry in Albania, Italy and the United Kingdom.
In Tirana we meet Besnik, an Albanian young cis man who uses violence to stop his women getting under his skin. In Rome, Catalin is a Romanian minor selling sex to other cis men as he thinks it’s the best job he’s ever had. Having used violence in the past, Adrian, a Romanian young cis man, now respects his working girl to keep himself safe and out of jail. In London there’s Candy, a Romanian young cis woman who loves her trafficker to the point of getting convicted for controlling. Alina, a Moldovan cis woman, decides to work independently in the UK sex industry after having been trafficked. We also meet Cynthia, a Venezuelan trans woman selling sex to feed her estranged family while waiting to fix her papers.
These voices often go against the grain of popular expectations that most migrant sex workers are exploited and forced to sell sex against their will. Confronting these attitudes, Normal is an experimental documentary using actors and filming their performances of real research interviews to protect the identities of the original subjects and to challenge the criteria of authenticity underpinning humanitarian borders, documentary filmmaking and academic research.
Normal was screened at the 2012 Raindance International Film Festival.
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Normal is available on demand online in several languages:
English: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/normalfr
French: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/normalfr
Italian: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/normaleit
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FOR TEACHING PURPOSES: NORMAL is also available on the KANOPY.COM portal most universities subscribe to. Please only use the KANOPY platform for teaching purposes: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/310317
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For more informattion about the research process that framed the production of Normal, see Chapter Nine (Ethnofictional Counter-Representations), but also Chapters Six (The Trafficking of Migration), Seven (Love, Exploitation, and Trafficking) and Eight (Interviewing Agents) of my book Mai, N. (2018) Mobile Orientations: An Intimate Autoethnography of Migration, Sex Work, and Humanitarian Borders, Chicago: Chicago University Press – American Sociological Association Sexualities Section 2020 Distinguished Book Award.
SAMIRA (2013 – 27MIN)
Samira is a two screen film-installation on the story of Karim, an Algerian refugee that having obtained asylum as a transsexual woman now wants to go back home to become the male head of his family.
The film is based on a real personal story and on real situations encountered in the context of long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Marseille.
The main character Karim/Samira is played by Karl Sarafidis.
Samira questions the effectiveness and scope of humanitarian initiatives targeting migrant sex workers and sexual minority asylum seekers. In order to get their rights recognised and avoid deportation migrant women, men and transgender people reassemble their bodies and perform their subjectivities according to standardised victimhood, vulnerability and gender/sex scripts. In the process only a minority of migrants targeted by anti-trafficking interventions and applying for asylum obtain protection, refugee status and the associated rights. The vast majority are treated as collateral damage and become either irregularly resident in immigration countries or forcefully deported against their will and in often dangerous circumstances to their countries of origin.
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Samira is available on demand online several languages:
English: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/samiraen
French: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/samirafr
Italian: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/samirait
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FOR TEACHING PURPOSES: SAMIRA is also available on the KANOPY.COM portal most universities subscribe to. Please only use the KANOPY platform for teaching purposes: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/310319
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The following open access article analyses the research process that encompassed the production of Samira:
Mai, N. (2016) ‘Assembling Samira: Understanding Sexual Humanitarianism through Experimental Filmmaking,’ antiAtlas Journal, 1. Available online: http://www.antiatlas-journal.net/01-assembling-samira-understanding-sexual-humanitarianism-throughexperimental-filmmaking
For a post-screening online discussion of the film: https://www.antiatlas.net/assembling-samira-an-art-science-installation-on-embodied-humanitarian-borders-en/
TRAVEL (2016 – 63 min)
Travel (Mai 2016; 63 min) is a two-screen film-installation and ethnofiction presenting the life history of Joy, a Nigerian migrant woman selling sex in the Bois de Vincennes in Paris. Joy left Nigeria in order to help her family after the death of her father. She knew that she was going to sell sex before leaving, but was unaware of the hard working and life condition she would have had to face in France. Travel explores Joy’s experiences of self-realisation and exploitation in the sex industry by representing the way she gradually reinterprets her experience of migration and freedom as also characterised by exploitation and trafficking.
Travel was co-written with a group of 8 Nigerian migrant sex workers assisted by the Bus des Femmes association in Paris. Its main character Joy is the embodiment of their collective experiences and trajectories of migration, self-realisation and exploitation. The roles in the films are played by non-professional actresses, including some of the original co-authors, in order to protect them from the stigmatisation associated with sex work and also to question what constitutes authenticity when understanding and representing humanitarian processes in scientific and filmic terms.
Travel (2016) and its sister film-installation Samira (2013) challenge the effectiveness and scope of humanitarian initiatives targeting migrant sex workers and sexual minority asylum seekers. In order to get their rights recognised and avoid deportation migrant women, men and transgender people need to re-present their biographies and experiences according to stereotypical canons of victimhood and suffering, which often act as humanitarian borders excluding vulnerable migrants from protection and asylum.
Travel was screened at the 2017 RAI (Royal Anthropological Institute) Film Festival in Bristol.
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Travel is available on demand online in several languages:
English: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/travelen
French: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/travelfr2
Italian: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/travelviaggiareit
Portuguese: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/travelviagempor
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FOR TEACHING PURPOSES: TRAVEL is also available on the KANOPY.COM portal most universities subscribe to. Please only use the KANOPY platform for teaching purposes: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/295274
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The following open access article offers an analysis of the collaborative and co-creative research process that encompassed the production of Travel:
Mai, N. (2016) “Too Much Suffering”: Understanding the Interplay Between Migration, Bounded Exploitation and Trafficking Through Nigerian Sex Workers’ Experiences’, Sociological Research Online 21(4): 1-14. Available online: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/21/4/13.html – DOI: 10.5153/sro.4158
CAER (2020 – 61 mins)
CAER (CAUGHT) is the result of my collaboration with the Transgrediendo Intercultural Collective, a grass root association defending the rights of trans Latina migrant women in Queens, New York City.
CAER is an experimental and collaborative documentary combining fiction (ethnofiction) and observational nonfiction methods to include people whose lives are portrayed and who are directly concerned in all phases of its production.
CAER is also a tribute to the work and legacy of Lorena Borjas, the mother of these Latin transgender women living in Queens, who was one of the first victims of COVID-19 in New York in March 2020.
The story and the roles in the film were written and played by members of the TRANSgrediendo Intercultural Collective who were also involved in the editing of the film.
They were written collaboratively through several writing workshops allowing the people directly concerned to express their real individual and collective experiences of migration, sex work, and exploitation.
Rosa and Paloma, the two protagonists, fight transphobic violence, persecution from the police and defend their cases of trafficking in an increasingly anti-migration political environment in the US.
Together with their friends and colleagues they also assert their identities creatively during a drag show that allows them to counter their marginalization and stigmatisation.
Although Paloma and Rosa’s story is fictional, it expresses both creatively and factually the life events and lived experiences of violence, trafficking, sex work, and discrimination of the people who collaborated in its creation.
CAER includes several nonfiction debate scenes in which the film protagonists talk about important issues concerning the trans Latina population in Queens such as police persecution, the difference between sex work and trafficking and the lack of occupational alternatives to sex work.
In the film, the fiction story is framed within the filming of the real feedback screening of the film to the members of the TRANSgrediendo Intercultural Collective who collaborated in its making ahead of the final editing, during which they discuss their involvement and the story and characters they wrote in relation to their personal and collective experiences.
CAER was selected for the Outfest Fusion LGBTQ People of Color Film Festival 2021; the Sheffield DocFest 2021 (UK competition); the Vancouver Queer Film Festival 2021, the Newfest LGBTQ+ NYC Film Festival 2021, and the 2021 Jean Rouch Ethnographic Film Festival.
It was awarded a special mention at the 2021 AL BORDE Festival Internacional de Cine Transfeminista and won the 2021 International Trans Film Festival Divergenti in Italy.
On 17 December, International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers 2021, the Colectivo Intercultural Transgrediendo and I were all awarded a Certificate of Recognition by NYC’s Mayor Bill De Blasio for making CAER, which was recognised as having ‘amplified the rich and diverse experiences of trans Latina women throughout the five boroughs and beyond’, for ‘strengthening our thriving Latin American and LGBTQ community’ and for ‘inspiring all New Yorkers in your efforts to create a brighter, fairer and more inclusive city’.
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CAER is available on demand in several languages:
ENGLISH: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/caercaughten
FRENCH: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/caerfrvod2
ITALIAN: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/caeritvod2
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FOR TEACHING PURPOSES: CAER is also available on the KANOPY.COM portal most universities subscribe to. Please only use the KANOPY platform for teaching purposes: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/12168699
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For more information about CAER: https://caer-film.org/
The following open access article offers an analysis of the collaborative and co-creative research process that framed the production of CAER:
Mai, N., & Winslet, L. (2022). CAER: Co-creating a Collaborative Documentary about the Lives and Rights of Trans Latinx People Working in the Sex Industry in Queens, NYC. Anti-Trafficking Review, (19), 130–133. https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.2012221910
Nicola Mai 