Ghosts

Ghosts starts with a vanful of cockle-pickers on the beach. Night falls, the tide comes in, and everyone knows how the story is going to end. But before it does, the film flashes back to tell how one of the cockle-pickers came to be there. Ai Qin is a single mother in rural China who cannot afford to bring up her son. So she pays $25,000 to come to England. It is like the worst kind of mortgage: she has paid to make herself an impoverished illegal immigrant with a financial millstone around her neck. Now in the gangmaster’s power, she is put to work on a farm, picking spring onions, or in a factory, processing supermarket chickens, paying off her debt one miserable chicken wing at a time (Source: Kinnes 2007 np).

[Ai Qin:] Mr Lin. Where do they send these spring onions? [Mr Lin:] Asda. Sainsbur’ys. Tesco. Supermarkets.(Source: Broomfield 2006, np).

[Later, Ai Qin is shopping with a co-worker in a Tesco supermarket:] Look, spring onions. [She picks them up] Maybe I picked these ones myself. Wow. 58p. They’re so expensive. What a rip-off. [Co-worker:] We wrapped those onions but can’t even afford them (Source: Broomfield 2006, np).

Ghosts is an attempt, using non-actors working from an improvised script, to make sense of the Morecambe Bay tragedy in 2004, in which 21 Chinese cockle-pickers died. Broomfield’s film (the title refers to the Chinese word for white westerners) tells its story from the point of view of single mother Ai Qin (Ai Qin Lin). She has left her baby son with her parents in China to make a new life for herself in Britain. She has also left behind a $25,000 debt. The gangsters who organise her illegal entry into the country insist she will soon be earning enough to pay it off. In fact, ensconced in the suburbs with gangmaster Mr Lin (Zhan Yu), and his other hapless workers, she finds herself toiling any and all hours for a pittance. Then, tipped off by hostile neighbours, the police raid the house and Mr Lin takes his team to try their hand at cockle-picking (Source: O’Sullivan 2007 np link).

From working in a duck-packing plant to picking spring onions and resisting working in ‘massage parlours’, Ai-Qin finally ends up on the quicksands of Morecambe Bay, working at night to avoid local cocklers, desperate to make more money to send home to her son. The rest we know (Source: Ramaswamy 2006 p.3).

This is film based on a true story. It is disturbing portrayal of a secret world that is all around us. Ai Qin, a young Chinese girl from Fujian, China, … becomes another one of three million migrant workers that is the bedrock of the [UK] food supply chain, construction and hospitality industries. She lives with eleven other Chinese in a two-bedroom suburban house. With an illegally forged work permit she works in factories preparing food for British supermarkets. In their search for better paying jobs to repay their debts they end up cockling in Morecambe Bay at night. On February 5th 2004 twenty-three Chinese drowned in Morecambe, their families in China are still paying off their debts (Source: Bromfield nda np link).

Broomfield begins and ends his movie on the Morecambe beach: not a haven for holidaymakers, but a huge, empty, cruel space which looks like something from the end of the universe. It seems like Ai Qin and her wretched friends have been finally washed up on some vast shore in a netherworld of undreamt-of callousness and indifference. The ‘ghosts’ of the title refers to how Chinese refer to the Anglo-Saxons, but the word is more comparable to the illegals themselves, dead in spirit, drifting unacknowledged through the UK’s service industry. The movie shows a new, alien, exotically grim England – the England that the illegals see. Ai Qin awakes in her overcrowded, rented, two-bed house in a gaunt housing estate to look on to a cheerless landscape into which globalisation has transplanted the chill of world poverty. Broomfield avoids the metropolitan cliches of neon-lit Chinatown with its seedy glamour and takes us instead to Thetford in Norfolk and then to Morecambe, places the English complacently assume to be homes of provincial decency. Instead, they look like new centres of hypocrisy, brutality and racism (Source: Bradshaw 2007 p.7).

And what a dismal life it is. Rather than grand traumas, we witness a gradual attrition of the spirit. Ai Qin and her fellow workers do the unpleasant tasks and antisocial hours that most other workers refuse to do. Like Richard Linklater’s forthcoming Fast Food Nation, the film points the finger at the powerful corporations constantly driving down the cost of food production. In Ghosts, the culprits are the supermarket chains – Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco – are named (Source: Ide 2007 p.17).

… one visit to a major supermarket, where Ai Qin happens across the spring onions we’ve seen her picking in the preceding scene, establishes our complicity as consumers in the workers’ fate (Source: McCahill 2007 p.19).

Nothing, not even our prior knowledge, mitigates the awfulness of the film’s ending. I won’t easily forget the shot of Ai Qin, Atlantic waves about to engulf the van on whose roof she is perched, making a final call to her son (Source: Sandhu 2007 p.29 link).

Meeting and talking with the cockle pickers living in Liverpool is an eye-opener to me,’ Broomfield says. ‘What struck me most is the dignity of the people living and working in such conditions. Everyone there has a tremendous story to tell. Everyone has a family to feed and has to wait for years before they can reunite.’ When he asked what music they liked, one said: ‘No time for music.’ ‘I was really moved by the solidarity coming out of the Morecambe Bay tragedy,’ Broomfield says. ‘It really brought to light … the horrific conditions facing Chinese workers in Britain, and highlights the prevalent situation for so many undocumented migrant workers, who live and work under a system many thought has been abolished in this country a long time ago (Source: Pai 2004 p.9 link).

[Broomfield:] In ‘Ghosts’, I shot a lot of material undercover on a surveillance camera, and up until the last cut there were elements of that in the final film. Myself and Ai Qin (the film’s lead actress, formerly an illegal immigrant who was granted legal status two years ago) went undercover, picking spring onions and working in a factory. But it was too much like a different film and I was persuaded to take that out of the finished film. [Interviewer:] You pretended to be an illegal worker? [Broomfield:] I was pretending to be a South African, an Afrikaaner out of work, which is about the only sort of white English-speaking person who does that work. Ai Qin and I were a fairly unlikely couple, but we came in through the illegal route and paid money to gangmasters to get us the work and so on. [Interviewer:] And you filmed while working? [Broomfield:] Yes, I had a camera in a pair of glasses that were on my head. The problem with shooting and working at the same time was that I was working too slow. Most of it was piecework that we were doing and I was constantly getting fired for not keeping up. [Interviewer:] It sounds like your research methods were similar to making documentaries. [Broomfield:] Very, very similar, yes. In fact, one probably does more research for this. But it was invaluable having Ai Qin, who was a real illegal immigrant, with a kid back in China. Obviously, I could learn a lot from her (Source: Calhoun 2007 p.51).

Broomfield went undercover with Ai-Qin while shooting the film, working shifts in factories and fields; an experience which left him feeling like he was ‘going to die’. ‘I remember picking spring onions for about eight hours, then getting three hours’ sleep and then being hauled up to go and work in a book factory. I was always being fired because I was too slow, partly because I was filming as well. It was very, very tough.’ All of the stories in Ghosts are grounded in fact, from the actors’ own experiences to that of journalist Hsaio-Hung Pai, who went undercover living and working with Chinese illegals in Norfolk and with whom Broomfield worked closely on the film. In the end, Ghosts isn’t so unlike the rest of Broomfield’s oeuvre. It’s based on meticulous research, intimacy – he is renowned for spending months getting to know his subjects – and improvisation. As always, he worked with minimal crew, only five people (Source: Ramaswamy 2006 p.3).

Ghosts was made on a minute budget, using a single hand-held HD camera and what Broomfield calls a ‘teeny guerrilla crew’. If that was not risky enough in itself, he recruited a cast of non-actors, many former ‘illegals’ themselves, performing a script 80% of which is in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles. The entire crew could fit in one car, and the Chinese cast drove around in their own white van, which their leader accidentally drove into a trough in Morecambe Bay where it was wrecked. Filming also took place in China’s Fujian province without official authorisation (Source: Hoggart 2007 p.5).

Filmmaker Nick Broomfield, best known for his 16mm documentaries, switched to HD for his latest dramatic feature ‘Ghosts,’ which is about the fate of the Chinese cockle pickles on Morecombe Bay. Broomfield’s influential documentary style has been developed with a bare bones crew of between three to five people. He found he was able to maintain this compact shooting method with HD. Shooting 35mm automatically necessitates extra people to manage the lenses and change magazines, and the whole backup of catering and transport, he said. Working in HD allows Broomfield to transmit less tension to the cast’s nonactors than if the camera were rolling film. HD’s ability to capture low lighting levels made it ideal to underline the dingy, realistic living conditions of the immigrants’ houses. He selected a Sony 750p camera with prime lenses. Cinematographer Mark Wolf wielded the camera handheld, although he said it would need someone with an athletic build to hold the unit for such a long time. … Some night scenes shot on a Norfolk beach required significant noise reduction using Final Touch software and a Snell & Wilcox Niagra. The HD grain was exacerbated in the transfer to 35mm for the final cinema print. Some digital noise was unavoidable, but combined with film grain on transfer, it became too noticeable and would only be negated with the arrival of D-Cinema projection equipment, he said (Source: Pennington 2007 p.28 link).

Smoke & Mirrors has completed the graphics for the on-air promotion of Nick Broomfield drama Ghosts. The camera pans along a beach at low-tide and sunk into the wet sand are numerous tombstones, signifying the 23 Chinese cockle pickers who lost their lives at Morecombe Bay in 2003. Dan Andrew completed the online in DS Nitris compositing extra CG tombstones created by Smoke’s 3D department and taking out the headland and any boats in shot, and extending the skyline (Source: Anon 2007e np).

… while filming the drowning scene at night, the white van that the actors dinged to in the water was lost -possibly forever: ‘Yes, unfortunately it’s still there,’ confirms Nick. ‘When we started, there was a lot of pressure to go and film it in a water tank in Malta, but I thought it wouldn’t have authenticity and I wouldn’t get the same kind of performances from the actors. It seemed so important to shoot it in Morecambe Bay, which is this mix of the immensely beautiful and frightening’ (Source: Shennan 2007 p.8).

Unlike most pictures of the genre, Broomfield refrains from big confrontational scenes, with the possible exception of the sequence showing the police breaking into the flat occupied by the immigrants. The life of Ai Qin and her friends is just as unexceptional, as dreary and dismal as that of any of the other migrant workers being herded from one temporary job to another, living their daily humiliations from one pay cheque to the next and kept alive by the weekly phone call back home that they can barely afford. Sure, they have their momentary distractions and laughs, but it’s far from enough relief from the daily drudgery they have to endure. Though there are a few spectacular shots along the way, such as the black waves spreading like predatory animals over the deserted beach at night, Broomfield opts most of the time for a simple, documentary-type visual approach, stressing the dreadful accumulation of miseries rather than any single momentous event (Source: Fainaru 2006 np).

To tell the story as authentically as possible, Broomfield took pains to cast real Chinese economic migrants in the lead roles: the film shows the events leading up to the tragedy and also considers the wider issue of the conditions of immigrant workers employed at the bottom end of the food supply chain. He applauds documentaries such as Jamie’s School Dinners,which succeed in changing behaviour, and has hopes that this film will, too. ‘I want there to be recognition on the part of the consumer that they benefit enormously from [illegal immigrants] and should take responsibility for what they buy, or they’re joining in exploiting the situation’ (Source: Bashford 2006, np link).

[Ai Qin Lin:] At my lowest, I joined the Chinese Christian church in King’s Cross, north London. Pastor Lawrence befriended me and persuaded me to take part in Ghosts, a film about the plight of the 23 Chinese cockle pickers who died in Morecambe Bay in 2004. Although I did not pick cockles, the conditions they had lived in were similar to my own: a bedsit with mattresses on the floor and paint peeling off the walls. Like them, I used to get racial abuse and once my boss at the factory refused to pay me. I met Nick Broomfield, the film’s director, who estimated that there are 3m migrant workers in the UK propping up the food service industry and agriculture. Yet there are so many restrictions and we are treated so badly. The families of the dead cockle pickers still owe snakehead gangs thousands of pounds and their lives are threatened. I had never acted before and I was very nervous. I was also a single mother and ashamed. I have a son, Sean, who is now six, but it had taken a lot of courage to tell my parents I was pregnant and only a couple of people knew I had a child. Now I have found friends and support and I am studying English three days a week at a college in Birmingham. I am also a permanent resident; but only because I got arrested at work and a lawyer helped me to claim asylum. My parents have not seen the film; they are not proud of me. They wish, and I wish, that I had stayed in China. I came here to make money for myself and my family; instead I am struggling to raise a child on my own. But now that I am settled here, I am determined that our future will be better (Source: Jolly 2007, p.7 link).

The subject finds Broomfield at his most outraged. A middle-class malcontent, he is a film-maker who highlights injustice and sometimes goes over the top. In one scene, Ai Qin and a fellow worker go shopping in Tesco and complain that they cannot afford the spring onions they have probably picked. Even if Broomfield lays it on with a trowel, there is no question it will make you feel uneasy next time you’re at the checkout. ‘I wanted to do a film about modern slavery,’ Broomfield says … ‘It’s ironic that, 200 years since the abolition of slavery, there are more slaves than there ever have been, just in a different form. I also felt it was interesting that so many illegals were working in the production of food, most of which is for the supermarkets. Somehow this is able to go on in this country, which prides itself on civil rights. I was horrified by what I learnt in making this film’ (Source: Kinnes 2007, np).

I originally talked to Channel 4 and said I wanted to do a film about modern slavery and they were lukewarm, but when I said I wanted to show how many of these people are hired by firms that are used by major supermarkets they were much keener (Source: Broomfield in Hurrell 2007 link).

‘The places the Chinese immigrants work in aren’t one-off mum and dad type operations. This is British industry – mainstream,’ Ghosts director Nick Broomfield told Socialist Worker. ‘And there’s hypocrisy. When told about the situation, the supermarkets just say, ‘Oh sorry, we didn’t know. We won’t work with so and so again.’ But nothing changes. Until the supermarkets are targeted and made responsible for the way their food is produced, nothing is going to change. But who is going to take them on? They all make big contributions to both political parties. They are unbelievably powerful.’ Broomfield admits he was surprised at just how dependent the British economy is on the exploitation of illegal, and legal, immigrant workers: ‘We need them for the economy we have. And it’s so disappointing how Labour has been so mealy mouthed about the issue. Trade unionists who are trying to do work around agricultural labour, for example, are being frustrated.’ He says the decision to target the supermarkets in Ghosts made his job as a filmmaker very difficult: ‘They are so litigious. We had to prove that the spring onions we filmed being picked were definitely going to such and such supermarket. Some people are amazed that we even managed to name them in the film. People are so intimidated by these companies who think nothing of spending £2 million on fighting a lawsuit’ (Source: Anon 2007b np link).

At every angle the film connects you to this truly sad affair and provokes us to ask what is the real cost of the food and products we buy? (Source: Seen nd np link).

Ultimately, it is the spectres of corruption, racism and unchecked capitalism which haunt this deeply felt film (Source: Geall 2006 np link).

At Morecambe Bay, Chinese workers lost their lives selling their cheap labour to the big corporations, producing products to be consumed in Britain and abroad. British society can no longer say, ‘It’s none of our business.’ … The question is how we fight the big corporations. I believe that the real solution is organising workers. We cannot rely on the supermarkets and their suppliers to change their ways. Workers need to be organised in order to fight their exploitation’ (Source: Pai in Anon 2007b np link).

Who would have imagined that Nick Broomfield – the British filmmaker best known for quirky documentaries which are as much about him making the documentary as the subject matter – would (or could) deliver a feature film both evocative and solemn? (Source: Tsui 2007 p.2).

Broomfield … produces a piece of dramatic cinema which captures the essence of his documentaries, but involves the audience much more intimately with the subjects than has been possible in his previous work. From the use of a non-professional Chinese cast, through the purposely shaky camera work and even to the slightly poorly acted role of the English landlord whose property is crammed with 15 ‘illegals’, this film just seems real (Source: Cashmore 2006 np link).

The film is made with a cast from Fujian province in China, and shot so sparely, and with agonisingly aesthetic dexterity. I am awed by the accomplishment (Source: Burrows 2006 p.12).

As a study in exploitation it could hardly be more straightforward, and Broomfield’s script (with Jez Lewis) doesn’t really add much to what’s written all over Ai Qin Lin’s eloquently suffering face: show me the way to go home. Her untutored performance, and the knowledge that she herself suffered much as her character did eight years ago, lend an overwhelming pathos, while the horror leaks out of almost every frame (there’s an extraordinary shot of the tide coming in at Morecambe) (Source: Quinn 2007 p.6).

It is an incredibly moving piece of work, cast by non-professionals, who I thought did a great job. The movie at times has a documentary feel about it because it is very natural, no special effects of fancy lighting, and the ordinariness of the household and factory scenes convey the grimness of the workers’ existence (Source: itsacharliebrownchristmas@hotmail.com 2007 np link).

This movie, realistic and depressing, will leave you affected. The harsh transient plight of the migrant worker comes up to you like an unforgiving tide (Source: Keak 2007 np).

Would Ghosts have functioned just as successfully as a straight documentary? One can easily imagine Broomfield interviewing the Morecambe bay survivors and door-stepping the corrupt enforcers (Chinese and English) at their suburban homes. But perhaps that would have lacked the claustrophobic intensity of this fact-based fiction; the sense of being inside looking out, as opposed to the other way around (Source: Brooks 2006 np link).

This DVD had been resting on my shelf for some months – I kept putting off viewing it because I feared it would be a depressing watch. On the contrary, I found it to be hugely involving and, at times, extremely funny. It is incredibly moving (you will have to have a pretty hard heart not to cry at some scenes) but the eye-opening and potentially ‘worthy’ message is communicated with a humanity that is motivating and positive rather than simply depressing.  Nick Broomfield tells the story with subtle skill. The illusion of documentary reality is almost perfect but this does not distance the viewer from the characters – we enter into their thoughts and feelings partly through the excellent and subtle use of music and partly from utterly convincing performances (Source: Johnjoe66 2009 np link).

Unfortunately, Broomfield’s approach to telling this tale was plodding, prosaic, very long indeed and – ye gods – wearyingly predictable. The facts of those 23 deaths cried out for someone – a skilled documentarist such as Broomfield, say – to go argy-bargying in with a camera and soundman to ask some pertinent questions. How can it be, for instance, that so many parties in modern Britain – employment agencies, landlords, foodprocessing factory managers, supermarket bosses – seem so easily able to turn a blind eye to iniquitous conditions of immigrant serfdom? And how long will we, as supermarket consumers, continue to sit back and ignore the fact that cheap food production exacts a hellish toll on some of those who work within the process? Get me Nick Broomfield’s phone number: I want him on hand when I visit my nearest checkout to brandish aloft a jar of cockles and ask if there’s blood in it (Source: Belcher 2007 p.21).

Ghosts pursues the fashionable Leftwing agenda of instructing us to empathise with illegal immigrants. Broomfield shows us the seediest possible aspects of British life, and tries to make us feel that we owe anyone attempting to cheat their way into this hopeless country not only our hospitality but also our money. Why? He loads his story, which is a fictionalised one based on the 23 unfortunate Chinese cocklepickers who perished by misjudging the tide in Morecambe Bay, by making his central character a pretty young woman (played by real-life illegal immigrant Ai Qin Lin). Even this is not enough to dispel the feeling that Broomfield doesn’t want to acknowledge the illegality of her character coming here in the first place. Few of the characters make much attempt to integrate with the British culture – white people are routinely dismissed by the Chinese as insubstantial ‘ghosts’ – and they feel no guilt about taking British jobs. Needless to say, the indigenous cockle-pickers of Morecambe are portrayed as foulmouthed yobs. Quite possibly they are, but surely they had a legitimate economic grievance against incomers threatening their livelihood. One problem with Broomfield’s sympathy for the working class is that it is so selective. The early shots have a certain poetry – rarely has the rising of a tide looked more sinister but his attempts at gritty realism often look like melodrama, and repetitive, derivative melodrama at that (Source: Tookey 2007 p.55).

I found this boring. I have seen a documentary on this terrible tragedy which had far more insight and impact than this film. I didn’t learn anything from this , it didn’t answer any questions. Why travel 6mths to get to England? where were the English gang masters? How did they end up on the beach? Who gave them the jobs? Who was supposed to be looking after them? One minute they are working in a meat factory, the next on a farm, the next on a beach without any real story. I feel sorry for the people who have died and my heart goes out to the children involved. But this is a poor film, watch the documentary on this for the real story and answers. I can’t understand the 5 star reviews (Source: Wharton 2007 np link)?

This year officially marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, yet there are currently three million illegal migrant workers in this country who can be classified as modern-day slaves. The government’s attitude towards these people is hypocritical. They pretend they don’t exist and refuse to recognise them. At the same time the UK economy would collapse without this pool of cheap labour (Source: Broomfield 2007 np link).

Capitalism depends on the ready supply of cheap labour – it isn’t just this government that refuses to recognise illegal workers, but other sovereigns who have the interests of big corporations to consider. The slavery that [Nick Broomfield] speaks of is an economic one, a slavery which is a byproduct of a global malaise. If people want to rid the UK of illegal migrants then they must be willing to pay higher costs for products and services (Source: MdmMao 2007 np link).

Nick Broomfield … says the [UK] Government will do anything to avoid targeting industries which benefit from migrant workers. … ‘It’s consistent that the Government will do anything possible to avoid targeting industries benefiting from migrant labour in areas such as construction, housing and catering. Until the industries are targeted by legislation which makes them responsible for people working in these conditions, then the situation will continue. We all benefit from the employment of migrant workers who are paid nothing and work under appalling conditions. It’s not in anyone’s interest to change these conditions. We would end up paying for it and it’s easier to pretend it’s not happening’ (Source: Brookes 2006 np).

Many people involved in these industries were already aware of the problems and had been campaigning for a Gangmasters Licensing Act for some time. So the Bill was rushed through, with the hope that it would help to curb unscrupulous and illegal employment practices. But by the time we were filming more than a year had passed and nothing had changed. … the Act’s limited scope and lack of real bite raise doubts as to its power. For example, it has only just become an offence to use an unlicensed labour provider, and only in the farming and food processing sectors. It is hard to see how the real power holders, the super-markets, could be directly affected by this as they are in retail and, as they are quick to argue, several stages removed from the farms and food processors. While they tend to be strong on making sure they do things by the book with their employees, supermarkets distance themselves from abuses farther down the supply chain. At first glance this might seem fair enough, but the supermarkets do much to create the circumstances in which worker exploitation flourishes. A House of Commons’ Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report stated in 2003: ‘We are convinced that the dominant position of the supermarkets in relation to their suppliers is a significant contributory factor in creating an environment where illegal activity by gangmasters can take root.’ The supermarkets make ethical business practice pretty much impossible for their suppliers through a combination of aggressive policies on pricing and requirements that supplies can be turned on and off at a moment’s notice. Continual price cuts are demanded or suppliers are threatened that the supermarkets will source elsewhere. The low prices we enjoy are achieved at great cost. Unsurprisingly, the British Retail Consortium, a body that campaigns to defend retailers’ interests, doesn’t see it like that. It says that its members are ‘very supportive of the new gangmaster legislation and expect all our suppliers to adhere to and operate within the law regarding workers’ pay and conditions.’ In reality, what is described as a ‘highly flexible workforce’ becomes, at best, desperate people who can see no alternative to labouring long and hard for little pay and with no security of income. This, inevitably, means the people most vulnerable to exploitation by piratical middle-men and gangsters. This includes not only undocumented migrant workers, but many people encouraged to come to Britain under government temporary work schemes (Source: Lewis 2007 np).