My Developed eyes
I've done videos in four developing countries: churches overcoming apartheid in South Africa, immigration from Mexico, poor coffee producers in the Dominican Republic, and currently a woman's group doing education in Honduras. This trend (as well as some articles I've read) have led me to think about who am I, a middle class person from the United States, and how does this affect my work?

In Granta magazine, Binyavanga Wainaina, from Kenya, describes satirically "How to Write about Africa." "Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. (...) Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation."

This demonstrates pretty clearly a case of what happens when developed world eyes look at underdeveloped places, in what some are calling "development pornography." In many cases, it is exploitation to gain money (supposedly for a good cause). AlertNet, a service of Reuters, put out this article, Aid workers lament rise of 'development pornography', explaining how a picture of an emaciated famine victim often only serves to "perpetuate a colonial idea of incapable Africans waiting passively for help from their white saviours."

I, as a middle class white male from the U.S., see a situation differently than the Honduran teenager with AIDS, living in a two room house, that I interviewed last week. How can I tell her story, instead of my interpretation of her story?

A couple things I have done have worked towards alleviating this.

First, as with Convite, I lived with one of the families featured in the video. This helped me become part of their story, so that I could understand it better. Granted, I was still an outsider, but I attempted to see from their point of view.

Second, I have tried to have people talking for themselves as much as possible. Any government official or scholar may be able to give some overall statistics, but they can not tell the true story of a person who immigrates to feed their family, as in Fuerza.

Third, I have learned to have someone from close to the same situation actually be the one to interview. This arose mainly as a problem of language barriers, but I've learned this extends to class barriers as well. It helps people to give a more real interview of their life. I've had a middle class interviewer laugh at a lower class interviewee during the interview because of their less refined language. I can't use anything from this interview.

Fourth, in the DR, I worked with a student who was interested in making documentaries. I had experience from making other documentaries, and could share that. He had the cultural insight I lacked. He now can make other documentaries, without my help.

Will I ever be able to show the world through someone else's eyes? No. But I do think I can do my best to reduce my developed eyes in my work.

Posted at 10:39 #

Olancho, the Wild West

Why I'm here
I'm here in Honduras with the SIP program, but this is also counting for my Communications internship. I want to see if Missions Video work is something I would enjoy doing.

Here's a bit of my background: Last year in the spring, I had the oppurtunity to do a documentary with the Peace and Justice Journalism program here at the college. I went to South Africa and worked with a team, interviewing church leaders on how the churches are acting as an agent of change in post-apartheid South Africa (this will be debuting at the Mennonite Church USA Convention in July- see you there?). In the summer I did an internship with a production company creating advertisements for lawyers, mini golf courses and seedy real estate agents. In the fall, I worked on a documentary on immigration, entitled "Fuerza" (for more info, read this Bulletin article, or visit Soluzfilms.com).

What I noticed after these experiences was a sense of satisfaction after working on the socially conscious projects, while feeling like I was going to a job, for the summer when I made commercials.

So now I know I want to do something related to socially conscious media. Now the problem is... how? There isn't that much money in socially conscious media. I'm not looking for big bucks, but at least enough to live on. So the purpose of this summer is to kind of put my foot in the door and check out one possibility- Video for a mission organization.

And so far, I think I could do this. I was at the Mesoamerica MCC Retreat last week, and I was really interested in what a lot of the workers are doing. I don't know if I'll actually end up doing this, but now, at least, I know it's a possibility.
Posted at 11:45 #

What I'm up to