The Island
2017-03-17 | 42 minutes
Plot Summary
The Island is a short film shot entirely on Pulau Bidong, an island off the coast of Malaysia that became the largest and longest-operating refugee camp after the Vietnam War. The artist and his family were some of the 250,000 people who inhabited the tiny island between 1978 and 1991; it was once one of the most densely populated places in the world. After the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees shuttered the camp in 1991, Pulau Bidong became overgrown by jungle, filled with crumbling monuments and relics. The film takes place in a dystopian future in which the last man on earth - having escaped forced repatriation to Vietnam - finds a United Nations scientists who has washed ashore after teh world’s last nuclear battle. By weaving together footage from Bidong’s past with a narrative set in its future, Nguyen questions the individual’s relationship to history, trauma, nationhood, and displacement.
Cast
Recommendations
Similar Movies
-
The Displaced View
-
Tree of Knowledge
-
I Have No Memory of My Direction
-
Let Us Persevere in What We Have Resolved Before We Forget
-
Xenoi
-
On the Various Nature of Things
-
Leonora Carrington or The Ironic Spell
-
-YAMASE-
-
6-18-67
-
The Five Obstructions
-
Rumstick Road
-
Everyday Life
-
Chinese Viola
-
Every Wall is a Door
-
Decasia: The State of Decay
-
December Hide-and-Go-Seek
-
A Messenger from the Shadows (Notes on Film 06 A/Monologue 01)
-
Photodiary
-
Sebastian and Jonas Leaving the Party
-
The Sound of Seeing