Please join us for the screening of this award-winning documentary and find out how each of us can take action to stop discrimination and inequality.
To see is to act –what the death of a migrant worker can tell us about humanity?
The screening of ‘And More Miles to Go before I Sleep’
Thursday 23 March 4pm-6pm UK time ( in person )
Room LG 140 Hallward Library , UP Campus
Panellists include: Tsai Tusng-lung (Director) National Chung Cheng University, Dr Isabelle Cockel University of Portsmouth, Dr Bonny Ling Institute for Human Rights and Business
Abstract
Nguyen Quoc Phi was nobody before he died, but now he tells his own story as a young migrant from Nghệ An, Vietnam, to Taiwan in this documentary. Phi was an undocumented migrant worker, or a ‘runaway’, in northern Taiwan before he was shot dead by the police on 31 August 2017. What made him ‘run away’ from his factory work? How did he find jobs in various construction sites? Why did he start taking drugs? Was he an imperfect victim? These are straightforward questions leading to complicated answers. And More Miles to Go before I Sleep brings to the fore the nakedness of discrimination and the challenges to humanity if we choose to be bystanders indifferent to inequality and injustice.
The content of the film includes violent scenes, and the topics under discussion may be stressful for some viewers.
About the Panellists
Director Tsai Tsung-lung, National Chung Cheng University Graduated with a law degree in Bachelor from the National Chengchi University and a Master’s degree in Mass Communication from Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan, Tsai Tsung-Lung also holds a Master’s Degree in Film Studies from the University of East Anglia in the UK. He had worked as a journalist in print media, a special correspondent for the corporate TV industry, and a documentary producer of Taiwan Public Television Service (PTS). He is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Communications of the National Chung Cheng University and works as an independent documentary producer and director. He takes a humanist approach to his works concerning human rights, environmental crisis, and culture diversities. In 2006, He and several documentary directors organised the first labour union for documentary workers in Taiwan. He was the chief editor of the book “The Love and Hatred of Documentaries” which was published in 2009. It features collected interviews of 12 middleaged documentary directors in Taiwan. Tsai is endeavoring to promote the visibility and understanding of documentaries and, as a lecturer, has dedicated to training filmmaking amongst students and amateurs. Some of his recent works were collaborated with his Vietnamese spouse, Ngyuen Kim Hong, concentrating on migrant spouses and workers in Taiwan, such as See You, Lovable Strangers that recorded the hardships of Vietnamese farmworkers. He also participated in producing several films regarding current social issues, including judicial reforms, the Sunflower movement, and anti-air-pollution protests. He is known for his film Killing in Formosa, which won the Best Documentary for the 2001 Golden Harvest Awards. Behind the Miracle won the Best Documentary on Current Affairs of the Excellent Journalism Awards in 2002. My Imported Wife was invited to be screend in the Best of International Public Television (INPUT) Screening Conference in 2004 and was archived in the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. Oil Disease: Surviving Evil reveals the never-ending struggles of surviving victims of the 1979 PCBs Poisoning Incident. It won first prize of the 2008 South Taiwan Film Festival and was nominated by the Taipei Film Festival, Kaohsiung Film Festival, and Earth Vision-Tokyo Global Environmental Film Festival. Sunflower Occupation, the latest film produced by Tsai, was selected in the New Asian Currents item in the 2015 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.
Dr Isabelle Cockel is Senior lecturer in East Asian and International Development Studies at the University of Portsmouth. Her research focuses on migration and the Cold War in East Asia. The former includes labour and marriage migration; the latter concentrates on the use of women's voices for propaganda broadcasting on the radio and via loudspeakers. Her publications concentrate on sovereignty, citizenship, activism, motherhood, and migrant labour in the informal market. She is currently the Secretary General of the European Association of Taiwan Studies (2018-2024).
Dr Bonny Ling, Institute for Human Rights and Business Bonny Ling is a scholar and practitioner who works on international human rights and development. She has worked in the UN system and in international civil society. She is Executive Director of Work Better Innovations, a research consultancy with a community service mission working on new ideas for a responsible economy; Senior Non-Resident Fellow with the University of Nottingham Taiwan Studies Programme; Research Fellow with the Institute for Human Rights and Business; and Advisory Board Member of the INGO Human Rights at Sea. She wrote her PhD in Law on human trafficking and China at the Irish Centre of Human Rights and is an expert on human trafficking and modern slavery. She graduated from Cambridge University (criminology) and the Fletcher School, Tufts University (law and diplomacy). She has served as an international election observer in East Timor and for the OSCE. Previously at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, she writes on human rights, migrants, business responsibilities and international development and is a contributing writer for Ketagalan Media, New Bloom, Taipei Times, Taiwan Insight and The News Lens.
This talk will be chaired and moderated by Dr. Chun-yi Lee, Director of Taiwan Studies Program, University of Nottingham