The Island President: Premiere Screening and Q&A
Posted in Events by Kate Archdeacon on April 27th, 2012
| 27 May , 2012 | ||
| 6:30 pm | to | 8:30 pm |
The Human Rights Art & Film Festival (HRAFF) presents the Australian premiere of The Island President.
Jon Shenk’s The Island President is the story of President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, a man confronting a problem greater than any other world leader has ever faced—the literal survival of his country and everyone in it. After bringing democracy to the Maldives after thirty years of despotic rule, Nasheed is now faced with an even greater challenge: as one of the most low-lying countries in the world, a rise of three feet in sea level would submerge the 1200 islands of the Maldives enough to make them uninhabitable.
The Island President captures Nasheed’s first year of office, culminating in his trip to the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, where the film provides a rare glimpse of the political horse-trading that goes on at such a top-level global assembly. Nasheed is unusually candid about revealing his strategies—leveraging the Maldives’ underdog position as a tiny country, harnessing the power of media, and overcoming deadlocks through an appeal to unity with other developing nations. When hope fades for a written accord to be signed, Nasheed makes a stirring speech which salvages an agreement. Despite the modest size of his country, Mohamed Nasheed has become one of the leading international voices for urgent action on climate change.
On February 7, 2012, Mohamed Nasheed resigned the presidency under the threat of violence in a coup d’état perpetrated by security forces loyal to the former dictator. This film is the story of his first year in office.
Mr Nasheed, often referred to as “the Mandela of the Maldives”, has been a human rights campaigner and a global warming activist throughout his life. He will participate in a Live Video Q&A at HRAFF following The Island President screening on the 27th of May 2012 at the ACMI Cinemas.
Australian Premiere HRAFF Closing Night: The Island President
Sunday, 27 May 2012, 6:30 pm
ACMI Cinemas
For more information and to book tickets: http://hraff.org.au/film-event/closing-night-the-island-president
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Hello and thank you for this article and interesting movie. So-called environmentally induced migration is multi-level problem. According to Essam El-Hinnawi definition form 1985 environmental refugees as those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural or triggered by people) that jeopardised their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life. The fundamental distinction between `environmental migrants` and `environmental refugees` is a standpoint of contemporsry studies in EDPs.
According to Bogumil Terminski it seems reasonable to distinguish the general category of environmental migrants from the more specific (subordinate to it) category of environmental refugees.
Environmental migrants, therefore, are persons making a short-lived, cyclical, or longerterm change of residence, of a voluntary or forced character, due to specific environmental factors. Environmental refugees form a specific type of environmental migrant.
Environmental refugees, therefore, are persons compelled to spontaneous, short-lived, cyclical, or longer-term changes of residence due to sudden or gradually worsening changes in environmental factors important to their living, which may be of either a short-term or an irreversible character.
According to Norman Myers environmental refugees are “people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty”.