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Capacity Building and Micro-financing to young indigenous and local filmmakers

We are developing our capacity building work this year with follow-up film training with budding filmmakers as well as commissioning short films from the growing global network.

In Mexico

Earlier this month, we led a workshop on audiovisual production and digital media for the second time (we held the first last year, in 2017) as part of the course, “Strengthening of youth for citizen participation”, organized by UNDP Mexico and Red MOCAF.

With this workshop we hope to strengthen the network of young filmmakers who can serve as spokespersons for their causes and communities, to make a common front, through their stories, with other communities around the world. Find out how they got on with Thalía’s recent update here.

New Short Films Coming Soon

We are working with several youth filmmakers to complete short films on stories that matter to them and their communities.

Ginger Sanchez from the Association of Forestry Communities of the Petén in Guatemala is well underway producing a short film about his community’s sustainable forest management, from their beginnings setting up as an Association to present-day successes. He hopes that this film can contribute to securing an extension of their forestry concession contract with the state of Guatemala.

Erisvan Bone Guajajara, one of the coordinators of Midia India in Brazil, is beginning a fiction film project to explore sexuality, gender and LGBT relationships in indigenous society. He hopes to open a dialogue on the subject by looking at Guajajara art, culture and spirituality as well as new syncretisms that have been added with the absorption of recent technologies.

Yanda Montehuano, a Sapara filmmaker from Ecuador, is soon to begin work on a short film documenting the traditional textile making processes in his community and the importance that this process, from the tree to the finished items, has for their culture. Both their cultural traditions and their language are at risk following great displacement of their peoples since the rubber tapping era; this film aims to document and bolster this important heritage.

New Collaboration
We are delighted to receive funding from the 2018 Cambridge Climate Frontline Programme to support our ongoing work with young communicators to further amplify their voices. They are helping to place professional camera and microphone equipment in the hands of frontline youth filmmakers, as well as partnering with us to get these voices to new audiences by sharing their stories.

In Indonesia
Young filmmaker Kalfein has been talking about his experiences at a recent indigenous film festival in Bali – Kalfein is passionate to “guard and protect my culture and nature with writing & filming”. So watch this space!

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