To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions launched a competition last week earmarked to showcase the travails of the city's workers on screen. It's a laudable and canny exercise. A mix of images and explanatory narration, films - be it shorter ones, which the organisation attempts to harvest, or feature-length pieces - are a viable medium in generating (via internet distribution, no less) informed discussion about conditions which some might overlook when they are beyond their circle of experience.
And films about work and workers have been plentiful. Countless documentaries - made by filmmakers, activists or the workers themselves - have been produced throughout the years reflecting the flaws of waged labour in the age of modern capitalism.
The bulk of the piece is dedicated to the working and living conditions of the labourers whose endeavours have produced the city's rocketing skyscrapers and extravagant lifestyles. Borries visits Sonapur, the 'showcase' workers' camp, which is nothing but rows of prefabricated boxes; more of these labourers, however, are living in slums which sprang up far away from the international media's attention. The irony is that the villas these workers built have remained empty, as Dubai struggles to attract buyers for these astronomically priced, high-maintenance palaces.
But The Dubai in Me is not a simple expose. For example, the voiceover proclaims having heard many tales of slavery and suicide, but refrains from repeating (or re-enacting) them as this would be 'double exploitation' of the workers - first by their Dubai employers and then the filmmakers themselves. Rather than engaging viewers with sweeping emotional scenes, the film makes its points with plays in form.
The flat narration makes condemning remarks about how Dubai grants immunity to people trying out 'forbidden products and processes'. It highlights the artificiality of the city through the use of Second Life graphics, Google Earth-like tours of empty streets, and references to inhuman working conditions rolled out in the style of the news ribbon on 24-hour business news programmes.
