More than three decades after many Ethiopians left their country for exile, there is now a small but mighty handful of films exploring the experience of this diaspora
It is a truism that – agitprop and now tribunal plays aside – it takes quite some time for traumatic events, personal or political, to filter into a culture. Distance is key; time for healing, for perspective, for the discovery of an appropriate idiom. A few years, at least; 10 years. A lifetime.
But how much more complicated, how much slower the process, when it is combined with immigration across continents and languages. There are so often such great wounds – if the trauma was enough to cause people to flee across borders, leave family and friends, survive refugee camps, then healing will be a slow business. Add that to the basic facts of getting by: a new culture, a new language, the subsidiary damage of...
It is a truism that – agitprop and now tribunal plays aside – it takes quite some time for traumatic events, personal or political, to filter into a culture. Distance is key; time for healing, for perspective, for the discovery of an appropriate idiom. A few years, at least; 10 years. A lifetime.
But how much more complicated, how much slower the process, when it is combined with immigration across continents and languages. There are so often such great wounds – if the trauma was enough to cause people to flee across borders, leave family and friends, survive refugee camps, then healing will be a slow business. Add that to the basic facts of getting by: a new culture, a new language, the subsidiary damage of...
- 11/11/2009
- by Aida Edemariam
- The Guardian - Film News
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