To celebrate National Canadian Film Day in 2021, explorASIAN presented a virtual screening of Ali Kazimi’s 2004 film Continuous Journey. This inventive docudrama explores the exclusionary politics that kept the Indian passengers of the Komagata Maru sequestered at sea off the Port of Vancouver for over two months in 1914. To preface the film, explorASIAN presented Oceans of Stories, a brief conversation with an excellent group of panelists who will share their own refugee stories gathered through their own personal experiences, art, work and family histories. Our panelists include: Leticia Sanchez, Sangeeta Wylie, Hannah Temple, Mohammed Al-Saleh, Patricia Woroch and Saleem Spindari.
Currents by Ruby Singh
“In memory of those we have lost and those who have struggled and sacrificed so much, so we could be here now. The Komagata Maru story is a part of the long tradition of deliberate, exclusionary, racist policies of the Canadian government to keep out ethnicities with who they considered unworthy to enter.”
– Ruby Singh
