Let Refugees Learn

Let Refugees Learn

Powerful online video from a refugee NGO using ingenious film techniques

Film can be at its best when switching the lightbulb on above viewers’ heads, perhaps making them think a little differently about a controversial topic. That’s exactly what this online video does, drawing on deceptively simple but genuinely ingenious filmmaking methods. The argument of the film’s sponsor, Refugee Action, is for refugee access to English teaching services. While its use of celebrity endorsement (the eloquent final words of actor Juliet Stevenson) is a tried-and-true technique since time immemorial, what precedes it is strikingly original.

The main body of the film consists of refugees – as played by actors – filmed against a blank background and speaking to camera a script drawing on a complex word-scrambling system, which pulls us from their initial challenging struggles with the English language through increasing fluency to their full, rich participation in British society.

It’s a brilliant example of a how a clever filmmaking concept, executed with confident simplicity, can in just two minutes create a sort of accelerated learning process for viewers that’s both informative and emotionally affecting.

The producers responsible for that concept and execution are creative video agency Brickwall whose online video work has run the gamut of clients from Greenpeace to Experian to the NSPCC and from BBC Bitesize to multiple parts of the NHS.

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From the collection

Refugee Week

To mark Refugee Week, BFI and Counterpoints Arts have compiled a collection of films that explore refugee experiences across continents and generations

From First World War newsreels to 21st Century online video, these works bear witness to displacement across the globe.

Refugee Week is an international festival of arts, cultural and educational events that celebrate the contributions and diversity that refugees bring, and encourages a better understanding between communities.

12 videos in this collection

John Krish's deeply compassionate documentary on the resettlement of refugees in Britain; made to mark World Refugee Year 1959.

Return to Life

  • 1960
A Hungarian refugee attempts to navigate 1950s London with no English, little money and only an address on a postcard for guidance.

Refuge England

  • London
  • 1959
Fascinating, sometimes harrowing record of life in camps run by international aid agencies following the bombing of Shanghai by the Japanese.

Refugees in Shanghai Their Life and Their Education

  • Shanghai
  • 1945
Heart-rending British appeal film for funds to ease suffering of China's orphaned children and starving millions after Japanese invasion.

Aid to China

  • 1945
Powerful newsreel images of displaced Serbians seeking help at a British military base during WWI.

British Nurses in Serbia

  • 1915
Scenes of panic on the streets of Shanghai as Chinese citizens seek protection from Communist and Kuomintang violence behind Allied barricades.

A City of Chaos

  • Shanghai
  • 1927
Belgian soldiers and civilian refugees gather in Ostend in early WWI, before evacuating to England.

Ostend in War-Time

  • 1914
How did Taiwan cope with the huge influx of Chinese refugees from the mainland after the war? This report explains why the island is a symbol of hope for all developing countries.

Formosa - Island of Promise

  • 1951
Powerful online video from a refugee NGO using ingenious film techniques

Let Refugees Learn

  • 2017
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Class of '87 - Phuong

  • Derby
  • 1987
Watch in libraries only

Impressions of Exile

  • 1985
Watch in libraries only

A Place in Mind

  • 2003
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