Dennis Harvey

Documentary filmmaker from Dublin, Ireland || MA Cinema Studies, Stockholm University || Noncitizen Collective

[dennisharvey]

A young man returns to Dublin Bay collecting and cataloguing a series of found objects. His relationship is over, and he will not fuck off.

A short film I’ve been working on with Kevin Breathnach and Hannah Lennon is coming soon. 

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"You try to manipulate them, try to get them to like you, and then you just take advantage of them."

In September 2015, Jordan Belfort returned to Dublin after his sold-out seminar the previous year.

Ben Lennon and I stood outside the event and asked attendees, who had spent between €70 and €500 on tickets, what they hoped to learn from the Real Wolf of Wall Street.

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In 1890, the Moreland Family opened The Irish Yeast Company on Dublin's College Street.

When he left school in 1940, John Moreland took a job in the family business, a job which he would hold for seventy-five years.

In January 2016, John retired and closed the shop.

Screenings: Kerry Film Festival 2017 New Jersey Irish Film Festival 2017

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The village of Brittas, Co. Dublin used to be home to Ireland's very-own Kwik-E-Mart.

Like many small, family-run shops around the country, it is no longer in business.

[dennisharvey]

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR EVERYDAY RACISM IN IRELAND

Writing in The Irish Times from Chile in May, I expressed a desire to return to and help shape an Ireland which rejected the prevailing climate of racism across Europe. After events last week, I am optimistic about our attitude towards severe examples of racism, but concerned about how we view its low-level daily occurrences.

Last Monday, a video of a group of Antrim teenagers physically and verbally abusing a woman went viral. The boys threw stones at the woman and asked her where she was from. When she replied that she was Romanian, the boys said “we don’t like Romanians” and told her that she shouldn’t be in this country.

For most of us, the video was an example of why we are against racism. It is harrowing to watch someone get attacked and degraded because of something so irrelevant as where they happened to be born.

Just like the boys’ parents, the majority of us were disgusted by what we saw. Alliance Antrim councillor Neil Kelly was “inundated with people voicing their concern in relation to [the video] and wishing to express their best wishes to the victim.”

Ireland said no to racism. Job done.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.

While the video exemplified an extreme form of racism which most Irish people find deplorable, we seem to view low-level racist sentiment as quite acceptable. This was evident in the RTÉ reporting - and our collective lack of reaction to it - on the tragic job losses at the Cameron gas and engineering plant in Longford just two days after the video went viral.

On Wednesday’s Nine O’Clock news, Eileen Dunne put it to reporter Ciaran Mullooly that there had been “some speculation” that the lost jobs would be transferred to Romania. This speculation, Mullooly replied, had come from workers who spoke “off the record and off the camera” as they left the plant. The workers felt, according to Mullooly, that they had been involved in a training process whereby they were assisting Romanian workers to “take their jobs.”

On Thursday, Cathal Mac Coille, host of RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland, put it to Willie Quigley of Unite Trade Union, the union representing most of the workers at the company, that Romanian workers were being “trained up (emphasis his) for what now is generally regarded as a transfer of operations to Romania”. Quigley flatly denied Mac Coille’s claim. He explained that the Romanian workers in the plant were simply people who were “qualified to do the work”. A seemingly surprised Mac Coille responded by looking for confirmation that Quigley wasn’t concerned about the Romanian element of the situation, which Quigley provided.

In a week when Teresa May revealed plans to make British companies publish lists of their foreign workers and when 98% of Hungarians who voted in the, albeit invalid, referendum on accepting EU refugee quotas voted No, Mullooly and Mac Coille’s low-level racist sentiment was unwelcome and unacceptable.

It is understandable that workers who have just been made redundant will be angry. They will look for someone to blame and, in the heat of the moment, may say things that are not fair. Thankfully, the idea that Romanians are “taking our jobs” is not something that holds much weight in Ireland. But for it to stay that way, when this sentiment is produced by the State broadcaster for two consecutive days, it must be challenged.

Most people in Ireland would not surprised by the idea that Romanian workers could be as qualified as Irish workers to do certain jobs. While I don’t believe Mac Coille thinks Romanians are incapable of good work, the way he expressed himself last Thursday implied that. If we don’t want popular discourse to follow the xenophobic path its taken in much of Europe, when sentiment like this comes from the State broadcaster, it must be challenged.

While the denunciation of racism which followed the circulation of last Monday’s video was positive, it is not feasible that it took something so extreme to move us to act. As racist political movements gather strength all over our continent, it gives me great pride that this is not the case in Ireland. But if we want to continue living in an exceptional country, we need to take an active stance against all instances of racism, no matter how grave or otherwise they appear.

Even though the teenagers, Mullooly and Mac Coille delivered their messages in very different ways, the basic tenet of their arguments was the same: “we don’t like Romanians.” Racism does not exist in a vacuum. Young people do not learn to tell those not born here that they’re not welcome by themselves; they learn it from those around them.

While very few Irish people openly identify as racists, we are all capable of producing and reproducing racist sentiment. It does not make us “bad” or “evil”, it makes us human. What is important is what we do afterwards.

If we agree with Neil Kelly when he says that racism has “absolutely no place in our society”, then we each have to take individual responsibility for making sure that is the case.

Whether it takes the form of extreme behaviour from impressionable teenagers or unfortunate lines of questioning from RTÉ reporters, we have to challenge every instance of racism we come across.

If we don’t, we may lose the widespread willingness to accept, embrace and welcome difference in Ireland, something which makes our country such an important exception in contemporary Europe.

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IN PLACE were a Dublin-based mixed-media artist collective working in vacant buildings around the city in order to reframe how we view disused urban space.

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To those who watched my Santiago documentary, Ambulantes (www.vimeo.com/dennisharvey/ambulantes), I'm happy to report that 6 months on, Alicia's juice selling is going from strength to strength. She's shifting up to 65 juices and 20 fruit cups per day and has a loyal customer base. She now stores her cart beside where she works which has cut an hour and a half off her daily commute. If you find yourself in Santiago, head to the corner of Curico and Lira for a chat and a cup of the best juice in the city. She'll be there from 6.30am until 12.30pm Mon-Sat. (at Curico con Lira)

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WHY IS IT THAT ONLY WESTERNERS - PRIMARILY WHITE WESTERNERS - ARE REFERRED TO AS ‘EXPATS’?

When I leave Santiago to return to Dublin this August I’ll have spent the bulk of two years between Spain and Chile. During my stint abroad I have seen the inequalities between immigrants of different ethnicities. Reading about the recent attack on the Ahmadzai family in Rathfarnham in Dublin, I was both worried about what it signified and heartened by the community protest that followed.

Like many Irish families, mine has a long history of forced emigration on both sides; that emigration continues right up to my generation. But I chose to leave Dublin, seeing it as an opportunity to enjoy a new lifestyle and a way to put my Spanish and film-studies degree to use.

In Madrid and Santiago I’ve survived financially by teaching English as a foreign language. But the real focus of my energy has been making two short documentaries about migrant labour. This has introduced me to the reality of emigration for those not considered to be from the right part of the world.

My experience as an Irish immigrant has been a world away from that of Hashem and Alicia, the subjects of my documentaries. I have come to Spain and Chile as a valued equal for whom every door has been opened. Hashem and Alicia have come as members of a marginalised underclass of immigrants who are given almost no opportunities.

In Madrid I was welcomed into my workplace, supported as I struggled to teach English to toddlers, and embraced socially by my colleagues. In Santiago, strangers have complimented me for learning their language, I have been thanked for coming so far to “share my knowledge” and have been invited into homes and offered delicious local food.

My welcome as an immigrant in both Spain and Chile has given me a profound connection to each culture that I will savour for life. But the inequalities for immigrants of different ethnicities have left me uneasy.

Hashem, who is from Bangladesh, is a former politician who ran his own carpentry business. After a change in government and threats on his life, he fled to Spain. His wife and three children stayed behind. He has spent his six years in the country selling cans of beer on the streets to Madrid’s all-night revellers. When it rains he sells umbrellas to unprepared commuters. Hashem speaks Bengali, English and Spanish. Despite his experience and skills he has never come close to getting a legitimate job in Spain. Nor has he been able to acquire a residency visa.

Alicia, who is Peruvian, sells freshly squeezed orange juice on the street. Although she has no formal education, Alicia is extremely bright, enterprising and strong. For 11 years she raised her two children while working as a live-in maid on a salary of just over €150 a month. Late last year she quit this job to try to earn a better living. She bought a trolley, was sent an orange press from Peru and began travelling three times a week to the market, where she buys up to 60kg of oranges per trip. Before dawn she fills her trolley with the fruit, wheels it across town and sells the juice for €1.30 a cup until the afternoon.

Rather than being welcomed into their new countries and offered a helping hand, as I have been, Hashem and Alicia have been left out on the street to find their own way to survive. This is not because of their capabilities or personalities but because of their countries of origin.

In conversations with other western immigrants in Madrid and Santiago I have always been referred to as an expat. Until recently I have always called myself an Irish emigrant. When my Swedish girlfriend suggested I someday enrol on a free “Swedish for immigrants” course in her country I balked at the idea of myself as an immigrant. I am still ashamed to admit that the xenophobic trope that paints immigrants as burdens who steal jobs and state resources had ingrained itself in my subconscious.

“Expatriate”, “emigrant” and “immigrant” are defined differently, but they essentially mean the same thing: a person not living in his or her native country. Our use of each word communicates not the nuances of a migrant’s movement but how we view the person. Why did I still refer to myself as an Irish emigrant and not as an immigrant? Why is it that only westerners – primarily white westerners – are called expats?

Our unspoken prejudice has made these terms western immigrants’ code words to differentiate ourselves from what we unconsciously see as our ethnically inferior peers.

Having lived as a very privileged immigrant for the best part of two years, and having spent a significant part of that time with less fortunate immigrants, I can see this racist classification at work every day.

The differences between the Spanish and Chilean people and me are at best an excellent icebreaker, at worst a source of friendly teasing. When I say something incorrectly in Spanish I might be laughed at, but I am eventually helped to correct my error. My sickly pale skin is a topic of good-humoured conversation.

For Hashem and Alicia the reactions to their differences are not so benign. An imitation of Hashem and his fellow Bangladeshi beer sellers’ accented pronunciation has become the shorthand used to ridicule anyone of a particular ethnicity in Madrid. Alicia’s dark skin and indigenous features greatly limit her employment prospects in Chile.

As racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia rise all over the world, it scares me to see such extremism in Ireland. I’d love to return to an Ireland that rejected the racist segregation of categories of immigrants from which I’ve benefited abroad. It would bring me great joy to come back to a country where the kind of hatred we saw in Rathfarnham a few weeks ago had no label other than brutal criminality.

I’d love if the hospitality I’ve received in Spain and Chile, and that which so many Irish emigrants who share their stories in Generation Emigration have enjoyed, could be extended to every immigrant we’re lucky enough to receive on our tiny island, regardless of their ethnicity or religion. That is the kind of home I want to help shape on my return. [Published in the Irish Times Weekend Review May 21st, 2016.]

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After Chile’s transition to democracy in the early 1990s, the country has become Latin America’s most stable and prosperous nation. But not everyone has felt the benefits of the ‘Chilean miracle.’

With the shadow of the Pinochet dictatorship’s aggressive neoliberal economic policies still lingering, many of the country’s recent arrivals have been left out on the street to attempt to earn a living for themselves. Through their illicit, unregulated free market, Santiago’s hawkers have ironically become the ones to embrace most vigorously the ideology that forgot them.

Subtitled in English.

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Before he came to Madrid, Hashem was a politician in Bangladesh. After a change in government and threats to his life, he fled his country. Now he is one of the hundreds of undocumented immigrants selling ‘road beers’ to Malasaña’s all-night revellers.

Subtitled in English and Spanish.

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FILTERED REALITY

A few months ago, when the Republic of Ireland soccer team were gearing up to take on Gibraltar in the ultimately successful Euro 2016 qualifying campaign, I was relieving myself against the wall-length urinal of Devitt’s pub on Camden Street, Dublin. As I stood there on the urinal’s raised lip, I gazed at the wall-mounted trophy case in front of me. Behind its sullied glass was the day’s front and back page of the Irish Independent. On the front page was a photo of a young couple and their baby being torn from a set of train tracks by armed and helmeted Hungarian police, the baby’s bare legs brushing against the blackened stones of the railroad. ‘Coalition Caves on Taking in Refugees’, the headline read. On the back page was a photo of the squinting, gesticulating Ireland team captain, Robbie Keane, below the headline ‘Remember San Marino’ - a reference to Ireland’s  ninetieth minute escape from a humiliating draw with the minnow nation in 2007.

I considered the portrait of injustice and inequality momentarily. Once satisfied with the duration of my harrowed display of disbelief, I proceeded to read about how past experience had told Robbie Keane to be wary of Gibraltar frustrating Ireland.

*

There was much to feel uneasy about in the wake of the November 13th, 2015 Paris attacks: the gruesome deaths of many innocent people; the threat of more violent conflict; the further stratification of Europe’s multicultural population. I don’t wish to comment on the attacks themselves here - considering how little tangible effect they had on me it would be crass to do so. Rather, as an unviolated witness, I want to analyse an alarming reaction from fellow unviolated witnesses.

As details of the attacks in Paris unfolded on a multitude of platforms, many people took to Facebook to communicate their feelings about the events. A hugely popular, quick-fire way to do this was to apply Facebook’s transparent French flag filter to one’s profile picture. Those who reacted in this way probably considered their response to be proactive and adequate, but I struggled to see it as anything more than a lazy and narcissistic gesture which likely took the place of measured reflection and tangible action.

I began to reflect on comments I had heard from Australian author and broadcaster Helen Razer on Hannah Arendt's book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Arendt chronicles Adolf Eichmann's role in the process of destruction of European Jews during the holocaust, a process described by Razer as drawn-out, tedious and highly bureaucratic: “it was drained of all the excitement, for want of a better word, that you might attribute to it.” Razer speaks in a similar way about something she terms the ‘Banality of Good': “It’s not as exciting as we might think it is. It’s not just reaching out and doing a wonderful YouTube jizz. It’s this tedious, theoretical, long-term process that you probably won’t see realised in your lifetime. We all love a parade and that can be good, but I think that satisfies us.”

Facebook’s pre-prepared French flag filter seemed like the “satisfying parade” in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. It was the antithesis of Razer’s ‘Banality of Good’. While a Good reaction to the tragedy would have required the investment of time, mental energy and physical effort, the application of the Facebook filter made no such demands of its chronically passive users.

To explore further, I set about asking some fellow Facebook users what was their motivation for applying the filter. ‘Showing solidarity' was the prime purpose identified. The means of achievement were undemanding. First, they had to navigate to Facebook’s own profile, which had the filter applied to its picture. Second, they had to hover their cursor over the ‘try it’ button below the picture. And finally, they had to decide for how long the filter would be applied and compose a short accompanying message (most likely a hashtag demonstrating that as well as being thoughtful and supportive, they were multilingual). That was all. It was a simple, practical, quick-fire process which bore results - likes from peers - within seconds. A far cry even from the comparatively labour-intensive creation of a “YouTube jizz” that Razer deems inadequate.

A dangerous result of this limp gesture is that through the validation gained from likes and positive comments, those who applied the filter are likely to feel as if they’ve responded adequately to the tragedy. While I’m not sure exactly sure what an “adequate” personal response to an attack of the magnitude of that in Paris is, I tend to feel that demonstrating solidarity takes a lot more than applying a filter to a profile picture. To brave the wet and cold of a November Saturday morning and attend a march dedicated to the victims, as 6,000 people in Dublin did the morning after the attacks, seems like a more constructive effort.

Along with seeking the motivation behind applying the filter, I also asked those who applied it to whom they felt the gesture was directed. One respondent claimed that it was aimed at ‘Western government’ in order to show that they ‘had to act radically to protect us.’ She felt that through the ‘collective expression of individuals’, a powerful message would be sent to those in power. Not least because of the threatening undertones of ‘radical action’ (shorthand for dropping bombs and closing borders, in my opinion), I was unsettled by the naive belief that the changing of a number of people’s profile pictures on Facebook would be enough to influence government. To think that one, or even many, can effect governmental change through anything less than painstaking campaigning, constant rallying and repetitive canvassing is whimsical. As Razer outlined above, radical change, be it Good or Evil, comes about through a long, testing process. If Facebook users think that their job as active, responsible citizens is done once they board the latest internet bandwagon, their future engagement with politics will come as a particularly tedious unpleasant surprise.

All of the aforementioned mechanisms of change are time-consuming, taxing and, for the most part, unrewarding, rendering them devoid of worth on social media. However, filtering one’s profile picture is quick, easy and instantly gratifying. When people filtered their profile picture, they not only reassured themselves they had reacted proactively to the tragedy, they also communicated this apparent fact to hundreds of their peers. With nothing more than a few clicks, they demonstrated that they were engaged with current affairs, politically active and dedicated to standing with (some of) those in need in times of crisis.

This was exactly the case for another person I asked about their application of the filter. He told me his motivation in doing so was to show the victims and his own friends that he was thinking about the tragedy, that he didn’t think it was right and that he supported those affected. As he conceded that he did not expect the victims themselves would see his blue, white and red tinged profile picture, what remained was an informative gesture directed solely at his fellow unharmed internet contemporaries. Rather than being a show of solidarity, the edited profile picture was an exhibition of egotism.

I do not write any of this from a position of superiority. My reaction to the Paris attacks (and, indeed, many other instances of human suffering) was as shallow as those who applied the filter. I consumed en-masse the hectic as-it-happened reports from the streets of Paris. I whimpered impotently at the clip of the pregnant woman hanging from the second floor window of the Bataclan. I trawled through YouTube for videos of the confusion inside the Stade de France as bombs exploded outside. As I did this, I reassured myself that my voyeuristic impulse to see more death, more horror, was a responsible, engaged reaction to the unfolding crisis, as if by some way my passivity would contribute to the recovery of those affected.

Reflecting on my own reactions and those of my Facebook friends, I realised how much more time and effort we need to put into our next steps as witnesses to tragedies. We must not be satisfied with getting fifty likes for an edited profile picture or by being able to rattle off every gruesome detail of an attack in conversation. If we want to show solidarity with the victims of violence in the future, we must take on the responsibility of gaining an in-depth understanding of the whole situation before we take appropriate action. Through tangible actions like braving the elements early on a weekend morning and marching, or traveling to sign a book of condolences, we are more likely to pause and reflect on what we are doing and why we are doing it. The internet is an efficient medium through which we can make rapid, unconsidered gestures, but even though these may appear positive on the surface, they are often nothing more than superficial and narcissistic. Does an unpunctuated, rushed Facebook message from an emigrant friend mean as much as a well-constructed email or letter? Does the patchy, delayed Skype conversation feel as good as a face to face meeting? Would the victim of a tragedy take more solace from a stranger’s filtered profile picture or from the same stranger’s embrace on the grey morning after?

My discomfort with the filtered profile picture stemmed, for the most part, from the feeling that for the majority of those who applied it, it stood for their job being done. Rather than being a symbolic, if narcissistic, first step in the drawn-out digestion of a harrowing human tragedy, it was the beginning, middle and end of one’s engagement with the event. If this is the extent of the thought process going on for a lot of people when it comes to dealing with an ever-changing, ever-challenging global landscape, then we are destined to experience many more nights like November 13th, 2015 in our lifetimes. So now, as there is something else to occupy the hallowed position on the upper left corner of our digital personas and the filter is removed, I believe we need to stop and think about what we can really do to react in the most positive way possible to future tragedies. Whatever we consider this to be, it will cost us more time and effort than editing a digital photo did. Rather than seeking personal gain from others’ reactions, we need to seek Razer’s tedious, hard-earned, banal Good. And just like Robbie did for San Marino, we must Remember Paris. Perhaps then we, too, can rise to the challenge ahead of us.