Empowering indigenous youth through Indie Documentary Film training.

You have to actually experience something before you have a story to tell. Arrive, sit, and experience the moment using all five senses. What defines this place, this time, these people…this story?

Mark Abouzeid

Objectives

  1. Strengthen the impact and capacities of bi-lingual education providers to contribute to protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expression in Peru.
  2. Empower indigenous youth from various communities by training them in Indie filmmaking skills and promoting cultural entrepreneurship.
  3. Foster and promote indigenous cultural industries in the region using mobile and indie filmmaking technologies specifically adapted to the environment and economic realities.
  4. Build an international audience for films produced by young filmmakers.

Goals

Derived from the Mirrors, Windows and Doors model for bi-lingual education, all workshop and coursework activities will be based on the following learning objectives:

  • to reflect on the students’ own culturally determined values, behaviour and ways of thinking;
  • to raise awareness of intercultural differences in values, behaviours and ways of thinking;
  • to raise awareness of culturally determined aspects of language use;
  • to practice observation and interpretation skills as well as critical thinking;
  • to develop and adopt multiple perspectives;
  • to negotiate common ground;
  • to develop empathy, open-mindedness and respect for otherness

Outputs

Teacher Workshop: The main aim of these workshops is to incorporate video and filmmaking best practices into Formabiap’s intercultural bi-lingual teacher education curriculum.

Youth Workshop: The main aim of these workshops is to teach filmmaking and video reporting skills to indigenous youth as a means for communicating their experience, a tool for artistic expression, and vehicle for career opportunities within their own communities.

Film Production Lab: Real Lives will provide three state of the art, indie-filmmaking kits and editing suite to be used during the project life and left to the care of Formabiap, afterwards. A self-sustaining film lab will be established for youth to borrow this equipment in creating culturally relevant works and developing career opportunities.

Indigenous Voices Channel: Selected films from the project and production lab will be featured on Indigenous Voices Channel of RealLives Youtube to create awareness and build opportunities for youth and teachers, alike. Real Lives will promote Indigenous Voices films to appropriate film festivals on behalf of the local filmmakers.

International Workshop: In order to raise funds for Voces Indígenas and create awareness, Real Lives and Juan Carlos Galeano will offer a two week immersive workshop for international writers, artists, and filmmakers in the beginning of End of June, 2020. The proceeds from this workshop will be used to pay unfunded expenses of the Voces Indígenas project.

Project Outline

Project Start: June 2019
Project End: June 2022

Project Partners:

all photos from “El Rio” by Juan Galeano.