Author: Olivia Peters

Participatory Filmmaking YouTube Video

The video above features PV Sateesh, a professional filmmaker and advocate for participatory filmmaking. He describes his journey towards his involvement in this form of participation, and work with the Deccan Development Agency. His acknowledgement of the wide audience base that film can provide in India lead him to become so involved in participatory filmmaking. He sees film as a means of expression, an incredibly valuable tool for rural marginalized groups. He describes the women he works with as being marginalized through different aspects of their identities: through their identity as women, as poor and as illiterate. Being able to communicate visually and audibly is a tremendous tool that represents the power of expression and active participation. Sateesh mentions the ways in the women create their own language and symbolism. Their “slave shot” from above demonstrates a demeaning power structure, and their “eye level shot,” represents equality amongst the women. The women soon branched out from making films exclusively for their own villages, and decided to investigate Bt cotton in the global South through film. Their travels to South Africa, Thailand and Mali allowed the women to share the stories of the farmers they met whose lives are intimately touched by Bt cotton, and investigate the controversy deeply. Sateesh asserts that these women have created a horizontal space of debate and sharing.

The organization that provides these women with the means to express themselves through film is the Deccan Development Agency, a grassroots organization. It operates within seventy-five villages and sanghams for women, or voluntary local associations. The five hundred female members are impoverished, mostly illiterate, and many are also socially stigmatized due to the high population of dalits, whose class is at the bottom of the social hierarchy. The agency provides both technologies so that the women can create and edit their own films, as well technical support by training women in the use of the equipment and media. As of 1998, the women have made over 100 films that range from expressing the local need for childcare to various issues of the environment and biodiversity. The social effect this plan has had on the women has been enormous, as informal leadership positions have been created for them. The women have the power to not only express their own point of view, but those of the community in a straightforward way. The success of the participatory filmmaking has resulted in expansion into other forms of media to open up a dialogue:

“Their compelling statements on why they should have a media of their own are forcing the academic and development world to rethink media policies. The women have also established a Community FM Radio Facility, controlled and operated by themselves. Born from the collective aspiration of the women to own an alternative medium of expression the content and the form of which they can control, the DDS FM Radio is five years old and has canned nearly five hundred hours of programmes.”

A common issue in the participatory expression of priorities in a community is that of how to reach the illiterate in an understandable and meaningful way. The facilitators of survey, who may be leaders of development agencies or NGOs, have a great amount of power in their framing of questions and translation of results. When compared to the ranking of images representing needs of communities, or using maps chosen and fully understood by the facilitators, the ability to tell one’s own story through any number of narrative or artistic strategies is quite amazing and innovative. The women own and produce their stories, their strategies for expression, and have the ability to expand the audience from village to region, to even the world through the Internet. Through this, the women gain a sense of capability, confidence and ultimately the tools to participate in the foreground as opposed to a passive or instructed participation in their global communities. However, we should ask ourselves if viewers from the West posses the tools to understand what a subaltern expresses, even through an unorthodox medium. Do we need more cultural context? Can we escape our own cultural lenses? Are we still translating?

Aboriginal Skull Returned — Sorry I could not upload the actual video

This video shows an Aboriginal ceremony being held to mark the return of the first of a series of indigenous remains being returned to their homeland, Australia, where they’ll be kept in the National Museum of Australia. They may eventually be buried when returned to their original communities. The World Liverpool Museum agreed to give back the remains of three of the individuals being held by the National Museums Liverpool after a request by the Aboriginal group. The man performing the ceremony is the spiritual leader of the Ngarrindjeri people, Major Sumner. The Ngarrindjeri is a group of 18 clans who speak similar dialects and have family connections throughout South Australia. The other man participating in the ceremony is George Trevorrow, the leader of the Ngarrindjeri. The ‘smoking’ ceremony was to invite the spirits of everyone’s ancestors to be present and to clear away any bad spirits that might be surrounding the important event.

I found our class discussion on Museums and their representations of civilizations extremely interesting. This video shows the difference between a Museum artifact as a dead object or an actual living part of a living people and society. The director of the Museum keeps saying the return of the “remains” while Major Sumner says it is the return of the ancestor’s “spirit”.

The director says that the remains were acquired during British exploration and colonialism. He uses the specific phrase “forged an Empire” to describe the period in which human remains were removed from their burial lands and brought back to Europe. He points out that Museums are thus a large part of British culture. How interesting to think of it that way! That British culture, because of its history of colonialism and imperialism, is largely made up of cultural artifacts from other civilizations and societies. This goes to support the idea that the West is largely understood and defined by what it is not.

I also find it interesting that the director says that it’s embarrassing to still have these items. If this were actually true, why did the Ngarrindjeri people have to ask for their ancestor’s remains to be returned? Where is the line drawn between what is embarrassing to keep in a museum and what is not? What if the Ngarrindjeri people or any group for that matter claimed that other non-human remains were of equal importance to them and wanted for them to be returned? I think that this issue brings to light a big problem with museums in general as discussed in the Wainwright book. Museums like this one and the British Museum present the fall of civilizations. The Aboriginal people and culture is as much alive today as the “Mayan” culture. Mayanism is a concept that can be applied to this situation as much as it can to the “Mexico Room” at the British Museum.

This video gives a unique visual of the contrast between a “modern” people and an “ancient” people. Just look at the expressions of everyone standing around the ceremony. It seems so strange and they don’t fully understand. I wouldn’t say that this man, Major Sumner, is a subaltern but this video shows how he speaks in such a different way than we as westerners do. I’m sure he didn’t convince the Museum board to return the skull by doing a like ceremony. He probably had to focus on the fact that these were actual human remains that needed to be buried, not that the spirits of these ancestors needed to return and be put to rest in their homeland. One image that stands out most in my mind is how out of place he looks—his bare feet dancing on the concrete, everyone around him is wearing warm coats, and he is painted head to toe.

This case is one of many around the world—people are advocating more and more for Museum artifacts to be returned to their original places. It seems to be a clear decision that Aboriginal ancestral remains should be returned to their homelands and taken by awaiting tribal members. However, there are other cases today that are causing much more debate, like the marbles from the Parthenon at the British Museum. What about the Egyptian civilization for example? Why is it easier for Australian indigenous human remains at the World Liverpool Museum to be returned than for Egyptian mummies at the British Museum?

Museums were always my favorite field trips when I was younger. Seeing the set ups of Native Americans eating around a fire fascinated me. I see Museums now as trophy cases for Western civilization—I think it makes complete sense for artifacts to be returned to their rightful places and owners as a step towards changing the colonialist ways of thinking still embedded in society today. Museums as they are are representations of other civilizations through a western scope.