Detained on Manus Island, Iranian-Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani was determined that his narrative would not get reinterpreted and lost within history.
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He secretly captured footage on his mobile phone, sending it across the world to be shaped into a film.
He filmed detainees phoning anxious relatives, ambulances arriving and fences being erected around the ramshackle camp.
A chauka is both the official bird of Manus, a local treasure found only on the island and the name given to the solitary confinement prison within the Manus detention centre which the interviewees in the film all focus on.
A particularly heartbreaking narrative thread is the repeated scenes of one of Mr Boochani's friends making his weekly phone call to his family back home who do not understand that he has not yet been allowed into Australia.
Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time will screen on Friday, June 14 at Mumbulla School hall, Bega from 6pm.
Film, dinner, sweets and chai $15/$25.
All proceeds will support refugees. Book by emailing begavalleyrar@gmail.com.
