My friends at The Voice of Domestic Workers need your support.
Please sign our petition to reinstate their rights as workers in the UK.
Without workers rights, Domestic Workers are subject to exploitation, including forced labour and abuse – often forcing them to go underground and undocumented.
For the past five years my filmmaking practice has focussed on the plight of migrant domestic workers. As a result of my field research, I have come to know the members of ‘The Voice’ as friends, whose struggles we in the ‘west’ will never truly appreciate.
In a united effort to celebrate ‘domestic work’ as a skilled and talented workforce, I am sharing my password protected films for the month of February, in line with the petition’s deadline.
Domestic Workers often come to the UK from developing countries for work. They are skilled professionals who pay taxes, in an effort to provide essential services to their families back home, whether it be access to education for children, or medicine for ageing parents.
Domestic Workers are often employed by very wealthy oligarchs based in elite postcodes of London. Because the nature of their work is based indoors, they are rendered invisible in the imagination of the British public. I hope my films can help imagine their struggle for visibility as workers simply seeking rights.
I stand in solidarity with the members from the Voice of Domestic Workers.
Please show your support by signing the petition HERE: https://bit.ly/37CIQmt
A total of 10,000 signatures is required for Government to respond to their appeal.
A total of 100,000 signatures and Government will consider their appeal for debate.
Best wishes,
Vanessa Scully
www.vanessascully.com
Decolonizing Marisa, by Vanessa Scully
(28:18 mins, 1 channel, HD video and archival material, 2019)
Decolonizing Marisa is an experimental narrative/ hybrid documentary on the past, present and future of exported domestic labor. This hybrid film form marries fiction, documentary, research, appropriation and autobiography to explore themes of migration and displacement through a multifaceted approach.
Viewing Copy: https://vimeo.com/327028519
MARISA 4.0, by Vanessa Scully
(20:00 mins, 1 channel, HD video, 2018)
The life cycle of a Filipino mail order bride is explored through the analogy of a sex bot. Marisa 4.0 represents four decades of Filipino Mail Order Brides; domestic servitude in the guise of ‘true love’ exported to the ruling classes.
Viewing Copy: https://vimeo.com/409932845
Maid in Mayfair, by Vanessa Scully
(6:47min, 1 channel, HD Video, 2017)
(4:05 min, 1 channel, HD Video, 2017)
Maid in Mayfair draws on real-life conversations with domestic workers and the artist’s own experience of growing up with a mother who was an Overseas Philippine Worker in Australia. It satirically appropriates Hollywood’s glamorised and comic stereotypes of domestic workers in order to explore the roles of hope, fantasy and belief in the everyday experiences of Philippine domestic help in the UK.
Viewing copy: https://vimeo.com/273318643
Viewing copy: https://vimeo.com/392182040
BACKGROUND:
Current legislation has fostered xenophobia in the UK.
A survey of 539 domestic workers in the UK conducted by the Voice of Domestic Workers in 2018 showed that more than three quarters had experienced physical, verbal or sexual abuse; half reported that they were not given enough food at work and six in 10 were not given their own private room in employers’ houses.
This vile exploitation of workers’ rights is a direct result of the Tory/ Lib Deb government’s hostile legislation to reduce UK Immigration levels, as promised in the 2010 Conservative Party Election Manifesto.
The UN Human Rights Council has stated that the policy has fostered xenophobia within the UK, while the Equality and Human Rights Commission has found that the policy broke equalities law.
Find more here:
https://www.antislavery.org/give-migrant-domestic-workers-in-uk-their-rights-back/
www.thevoiceofdomesticworkers.com
Images: MARISA 4.0, HD Video, 2017
