Human Cargo -- CBC Miniseries of note, easily deserving its MANY awards
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There were plenty of bad guys in this one but the worst by far was the Canadian gold mine exploiting workers in Burundi with its own private security force of mercenaries in league with a faction of armed and terrifying locals bent on genocide - a hedge that was apparently well known to Canadian government officials - in the story.
With authentic stories, a well-written script, the magnificent steel-colored Vancouver skyline as a backdrop and Canada's incomparable Kate Nelligan in the lead, this CBC TV miniseries couldn't help but succeed. Filmmakers somehow managed to excise block after city block of blue and green tarps like these covering leaky condos, including leaky highrises, in False Creek and the West End where it was mostly filmed. Nevertheless, the series shed much welcome light on every B.C. 'BILLY Dilly threatening to expose Canada once and for all as a wealthy, wasteful, wacky-weed-wonderful banana republic replete with charges of government corruption, notoriety as North America's con capital, a deeply-flawed GREEN record in terms of preserving and protecting the pristine Pacific Northwest coast in its care and troubling police and border guard issues - especially when it comes to welcoming new immigrants.
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From Human Cargo's Production Notes
Every exile makes his own map. -- Derek Walcott, Nobel Prize for Literature, 1992
Struck by the international community's culpability in the genocide of Rwanda, Linda Svendsen and Brian McKeown began their research into refugee stories six years ago.
They took their examination of refugees from war-torn African countries to Susan Morgan, CBC's Creative Head of TV Arts and Entertainment. What they had was a two-hour special. Morgan wanted more. She wanted to step behind the doors of immigrants and refugees. But she wanted to do so on a large canvas - a six-hour miniseries. And, Morgan had another important suggestion - shoot part of the story where it starts - on location in Africa.
Svendsen and McKeown attended refugee hearings, met with Immigration Refugee Board Members and Hearing Officers as well as refugee lawyers. They consulted immigrant service and settlement workers; read documents from Amnesty International, Lawyers for Human Rights, United Nations High Commission for Refugees. It was time to bring all of this together. In a rented boardroom on Vancouver's West Broadway, the writers placed six pieces of paper of their writing table - one sheet for each hour. Everything that happened in an hour went on its designated page. They constructed six interweaving stories about six strong characters, each of whom carries an ongoing story line.
"Linda and I believe that Canadian refugee hearings are profoundly dramatic. The claimant's case turns on something very primitive, very profound," McKeown said. "One person faces another and a judgment is made. Clear and simple or tainted with prejudice, presumption and misunderstanding. Either way, a life depends on that judgment."
The characters in Human Cargo are the conservative member of the refugee board, Nina Wade (Kate Nelligan); a driven refugee lawyer, Jerry Fischer (Nicholas Campbell); Moses Buntu (Bayo Akinfemi), a refugee fleeing Burundi's civil war; Nina's daughter Helen, an aid-worker (Cara Pifko); Naila, an Afghan refugee (Myriam Acharki) and Moses' sister Odette Kaba (Ntathi Moshesh), who is caught in the civil war with her three children. The six-hour series was shot in Canada and South Africa, features 125 speaking parts and over three thousand extras.
The main characters intersect, but the heart of the story is Moses Buntu, a Hutu schoolteacher, torn from his village and family, imprisoned and tortured. He escapes and embarks on a journey from hell to get to Canada. Moses carries with him a story that threatens to shake the power elite.
"The most humbling thing for me was to see how our material, material written for people from other cultures resonated with the actors," said McKeown "Our cast members brought history and experiences to the script. They made our material real."
"I think that every human being is, to some extent, a refugee," Svendsen commented. "We have all, at some level, experienced exclusion. That's what I wanted to explore." (From Production Notes)
Also see:
Welcome to Canada, cultural mosaic, and still more B.C. 'BILLY Dillies.
More on Vancouver's latest initiative to employ private security to police the homeless in the Downtown Eastside.
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