The Girmit Experience

Synopsis

“Girmit is evocative storytelling at its best, blending different digital art forms to immerse the viewer in the important historical and cultural story of Fijian indentured labour.” Sarah Allen, Director MozFest Amsterdam 2021 When disinformation was rife, when a fingerprint offered access to an unknown world and freedom was lost in translation, welcome to the word of ‘Girmit’ “Girmit: Defining Moments” a multi-dimensional motion arts experimental immersive experience. That transports the audience on a mind expanding incredible journey of the “Girmitiyas”. To see, understand & feel what it must have been like to be “Laali” – a 14yr old Indian boy on the 7,000 mile trip, to work in sugarcane fields of “Colonial Fiji”, and “Saati” who was born in Fiji to indentured labourers and grew up on the island where she met Laali. The two ended up getting married, working through the hardships at this testing time in history, creating an amazing life together. Despite a global diaspora of tens of thousands of “Girmityas”, the word “Girmit” slang for “Agreement” is not included in the Oxford English Dictionary, heightening the senses, that this is an untold human story and contemporary counter narrative exploring “Indentured Labour” for our post truth and fakebook times – that needed to be told. Created during multiple lock-downs using traditional & accessible emerging film technologies. “Rather than take a seat at the table where their protests might be digested into institutional credibility, indentured laborers & a mass movement left the proverbial room where it happens to write their own counternarrative on the realities of indenture” The Harvard Law Review, Legal History 2021 “Totally transported by the world of @lornainmanart and the incredible voice of @TheShamaRahman” Dr Maria del Pilar Kaladeen, Institute of Commonwealth Studies Associate Fellow “I kind of gave up on the idea of home being a geographical location, so music became my proverbial home.” Dr Shama Rahman, Neuro Scientist, Musician & Voice Of The Girmit Experience Poem

Artist Profile

James Edward Marks

James Edward Marks is an experimental new media provocateur. Prior to PlayLa.bZ, he co-founded Korean start-up DoubleMe, and launched the Award Winning Multi-dimensional HoloPortal™ at Ravensbourne University London. His work as a maker of psychedelic, pop culture reference & counter narrative multi-dimensional motion arts experiences has led to him being described by the Sunday Times as a ‘trippy hippy’ technologist and a transformative tech tinkerer. With a background in the motion arts at British Film Institute & National Film & Television Archive the UK's lead film organisation, helping open the IMAX in 1990s & award winning pioneer of web and social video with campaigns generating multi-million views & even saving teenage lives with ‘ , now a regular lecturer at Ravensbourne Screen School on Emerging Film Technology. Broke the world record for VR at Londons Comic Con, with his social video collaborations for the British Red Cross playing the Pyaramid stage at Glastonbury & recent collabs featured at Museum of the Moving Image New York, V&A, Tate Modern, London Design Festival, Boomtown Festival, Aesthetica, MozFest, BBC Click & Oxford University Press.

Credits

Director: James Edward Marks

Director's Statement