Moving Homes, Moving Histories: Displacement and Refuge in Remi Weekes' "His House"

Abstract

Abstract The past few decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in the mass movements of people across borders owing to political turmoil(s) and uprising(s). Such displacements, especially towards continents like Europe and North America, have given rise to narrative and cultural productions introducing a crucial intersection of existing socio-cultural and historical debates around the larger rubric of refugee community and culture. One such instance of South Sudan, experiencing a recent civil unrest and administrative change, leading to forced migration, has been explored through the visual and visceral cinematic experience encapsulated by Remi Weekes’ independent Netflix film ‘His House.’ The film tells an evocatively poignant story of two Sudanese refugees, seeking home and refuge, who are given asylum in Britain under various oppressive conditions. The film is, quite literally, perched on the binaries of culture, tradition and memory that go on to become the foundation of certain necessarily imaginative ideas of home and livelihood the couple builds across borders, away from their homeland. My paper would discuss the desire for ‘home’ in an asylum seekers’ life highlighting journeys and (re)production of narratives as an essential part of their trans-cultural lives. My arguments attempt to discuss the re-construction of (cross)cultural topologies and reconfiguration of space/borders. Finally, my research seeks to incorporate larger debates on myth and memory-making by negotiating space and imagination within the corporeal reality of ‘home.’