A short film based on my PhD research, for submission to the AHRC Research in Film Awards 2016.
Indian
indenture ensured the continued production of sugar in the British, French, Dutch
and Danish colonies of the Caribbean, Indian and Pacific Oceans after the
abolition of slavery. It involved the movement of over 1.5 million Indian men,
women and children, centring on contractual labour. This film brings to life
selected cases from the archives in Mauritius, the first British colony to
commence using Indian indentured labour, and the last, Fiji. Using witness
statements, petitions and letters, a voice is given to these labourers, set
against the backdrop of contemporary cane field landscapes of Mauritius and
Fiji. Thought provoking, and often
emotional, the excerpts in this film aim to offer a semblance of what indentured
life was like in multilingual 19th and early 20th century Mauritius and Fiji, immersing the viewer into the time and space of the Indentured Archipelago.
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