Award-winning Australian artist Missy Higgins has released a song and video clip inspired by Alan Kurdi, the drowned Syrian boy whose body washed up on a Turkish beach last year.
Oh Canada tells the story of the three-year-old who was found dead in September after fleeing Syria for Canada, with his brother and their parents. Alan’s father Abdullah was the only survivor – and while the song begins with the image of the soldier who lifted the boy’s lifeless body from the beach, much of Oh Canada is told from his father’s perspective.
Higgins, who is donating 100% of net profits from the song to the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre, first saw the photo while in her living room, nursing her newborn son. Like many, she was at once deeply shocked and overwhelmed by a protective instinct.
“It took a while to sort through all the emotions it brought up – including anger – and realise that I wanted to write about it,” Higgins tells Guardian Australia. “I tried not to take the moral high ground or point the finger at anyone, but rather tell the story as it happened. That [story] in itself, I think, is powerful and devastating enough.”
Produced by stark raving productions, the film clip – which features drawings by children affected by the crisis in the Middle East, accompanied by picture-book-like animation narrating the story of the Kurdi family – was created by animation director Nicholas Kallincos and award-winning director Natasha Pincus. Pincus was also responsible for the clip for Gotye and Kimbra’s 2011 collaborationSomebody That I Used To Know, which has clocked up 740m views on Youtube since being released.
“I first heard the song as an iPhone-recorded demo that Missy sent me. I was driving while I listened to it and had to pull over. I literally broke down in tears,” Pincus says. “The video concept needed to bring the song and Alan’s story to life sensitively, boldly, but also without overwhelming either of them.
She spent weeks planning the clip, and at one point was working on three different ideas for it. “But when I discovered drawings online that had been made by refugee children as part of rehabilitation programs around the world, I knew I had stumbled on the concept I needed to focus on.”
Access to the drawings was facilitated by Caritas and World Vision, who help children affected by the Middle East crisis through rehabilitation programs that, among other things, encourage them to draw. “Within a few weeks my inbox was full of hundreds of children’s drawings depicting the horrors of their experiences ... Their images haunt me still,” Pincus says.
These pictures are incorporated into an animation that has a handmade, child-like naivety to it: “It was important to me that it have texture, human touch, that still frames of it could almost be illustrations from a children’s story book. It should feel simple, beautiful and dark – like the imagination of a child.”
FacebookTwitterPinterest The pictures used in the film clip for Oh Canada were drawn by refugee and displaced children, who were asked to visually express their experiences, fears and hopes. Illustration: Caritas/World Vision/Eleven Music
As soon as Pincus described the concept to Higgins, the singer knew it was perfect. “There is something about the innocence and similarity of young children’s drawings from all across the world. They all draw houses and people in the same rudimentary way.
“Except these drawings were different: there were guns in the hands of the people, fighter planes in the air and blood flooding the streets. It was just devastating to see. And Nicholas Kallincos did the most incredible job at merging these drawings in with his child-like animations. All the characters have fingerprints for faces, which I think is beautiful. There is a nightmarish, fairytale feeling to it. I cry every single time I watch it.”
She hopes the clip will remind people of this tragedy, and others like it that happen every day around the world. “If there’s one consequence of this song, I hope it’s that people stop turning the other way.”
Oh Canada tells the story of the three-year-old who was found dead in September after fleeing Syria for Canada, with his brother and their parents. Alan’s father Abdullah was the only survivor – and while the song begins with the image of the soldier who lifted the boy’s lifeless body from the beach, much of Oh Canada is told from his father’s perspective.
Higgins, who is donating 100% of net profits from the song to the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre, first saw the photo while in her living room, nursing her newborn son. Like many, she was at once deeply shocked and overwhelmed by a protective instinct.
“It took a while to sort through all the emotions it brought up – including anger – and realise that I wanted to write about it,” Higgins tells Guardian Australia. “I tried not to take the moral high ground or point the finger at anyone, but rather tell the story as it happened. That [story] in itself, I think, is powerful and devastating enough.”
Produced by stark raving productions, the film clip – which features drawings by children affected by the crisis in the Middle East, accompanied by picture-book-like animation narrating the story of the Kurdi family – was created by animation director Nicholas Kallincos and award-winning director Natasha Pincus. Pincus was also responsible for the clip for Gotye and Kimbra’s 2011 collaborationSomebody That I Used To Know, which has clocked up 740m views on Youtube since being released.
“I first heard the song as an iPhone-recorded demo that Missy sent me. I was driving while I listened to it and had to pull over. I literally broke down in tears,” Pincus says. “The video concept needed to bring the song and Alan’s story to life sensitively, boldly, but also without overwhelming either of them.
She spent weeks planning the clip, and at one point was working on three different ideas for it. “But when I discovered drawings online that had been made by refugee children as part of rehabilitation programs around the world, I knew I had stumbled on the concept I needed to focus on.”
Access to the drawings was facilitated by Caritas and World Vision, who help children affected by the Middle East crisis through rehabilitation programs that, among other things, encourage them to draw. “Within a few weeks my inbox was full of hundreds of children’s drawings depicting the horrors of their experiences ... Their images haunt me still,” Pincus says.
These pictures are incorporated into an animation that has a handmade, child-like naivety to it: “It was important to me that it have texture, human touch, that still frames of it could almost be illustrations from a children’s story book. It should feel simple, beautiful and dark – like the imagination of a child.”
FacebookTwitterPinterest The pictures used in the film clip for Oh Canada were drawn by refugee and displaced children, who were asked to visually express their experiences, fears and hopes. Illustration: Caritas/World Vision/Eleven Music
As soon as Pincus described the concept to Higgins, the singer knew it was perfect. “There is something about the innocence and similarity of young children’s drawings from all across the world. They all draw houses and people in the same rudimentary way.
“Except these drawings were different: there were guns in the hands of the people, fighter planes in the air and blood flooding the streets. It was just devastating to see. And Nicholas Kallincos did the most incredible job at merging these drawings in with his child-like animations. All the characters have fingerprints for faces, which I think is beautiful. There is a nightmarish, fairytale feeling to it. I cry every single time I watch it.”
She hopes the clip will remind people of this tragedy, and others like it that happen every day around the world. “If there’s one consequence of this song, I hope it’s that people stop turning the other way.”
