GOAL worth pursuing

Harding University students launch African film project

By By Karis Butler CONTRIBUTING WRITER

LITTLE ROCK — This month, three Harding University students embark on a journey to craft a documentary film unlike most of its kind.

The film will capture the lives of the Yao people of the Nomba Village in Mozambique, Africa. The documentary will be unique in that it will be filmed by both the university students and the Yao people themselves.

Harding students Nick Michael, a senior English major; Tyler Jones, a senior political science major; and Kelsey Sherrod, a junior English major, along with Maribeth Browning, a junior journalism major at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., left Monday to spend eight weeks on the continent of Africa, capturing footage for their film.

The idea for the project was birthed last year when Michael and Jones took Harding's Missionary Anthropology course, taught by Kyle Holton, mission-ary-in-residence at Harding last school year. Michael and Jones were interested in developing a project that was "more than an internship," Michael said.

Holton and his wife, Ginger, along with Rusty and Anne Caldwell, founded a nonprofit organization and resource center in Mozambique that they named Malo Ga Kujilana, which means "place of reconciliation."

All four students had expressed to one another a desire to travel overseas and develop their own impactful internship, and partnering with Holton, Sherrod said, "was the last piece" they needed. Michael and Jones met with Holton and developed the project, now called "Kujilana."

The mission of the project is two-fold: to empower Africans through the use of a new technological medium and to counter the often negative assumptions that Americans make about Africa with storiesof hope.

"In a world that is shrinking, it is going to become increasingly difficult to allow a [separation of] a thousand miles to mean that we can typecast other people or reduce other human beings into a role that we have assigned them," Sherrod said. "People need to learn about each other, and interactions with other human beings has got to come from an understanding that runs deep."

Browning emphasized that while the frequently told stories of AIDS plagued orphans and malnourished Africans are true, their mission is to capture the positive stories that Africa emits - stories that are often overshadowed by the pleas for aid in the continent.

The major distinction between the Kujilana project and other documentaries will be the African hands holding the camera.

"We're trying to create an equality of image, where, at some point in the documentary, we would love for there to be no distinction between African images and American images," Michael said.

The team took a film kit, purchased by the Harding Honors College, with them, as well as additional cameras for capturing footage. The students will film with two highdefinition cameras, while the locals will be entrusted with one high-definition camera, as well as six smaller "grab and go" cameras to use, all purchased with the help of private donors. The students, as well as the African village, will also be provided with audio kits and editing software.

The long-term goal, Browning said, is to have a technology library in the village where the villagers can "check out" a camera to film personal events, such as weddings, which can then be uploaded for worldwide view on a Web site.

The project is being funded in a myriad of ways. The travel expenses of the four students- approximately $4,000 - have been funded by friends and family through the Global Outreach internship program at Harding. The total production cost is about $25,000 and has been funded primarily by the Harding Honors College, project donors and several churches.

Jim Miller, instructor of journalism at Harding, sees this project as an example of expert storytelling.

"It's an idea that can change the way the world sees the Yao, and it's an idea that can change the way the Yao see themselves," Miller wrote as a response to the team's project proposal. "As a journalist, the Kujilana Project is an effort I can support because it represents storytelling at its finest."

Jeffrey T. Hopper, dean of the Honors College and International Programs at Harding, agrees with Miller and recognizes the aptitude of these students who are taking on aproject with such potential.

"Not only the idea of the storytelling project, but the students themselves are deserving of support," Hopper said. "I think that this project has the potential to empower individuals, gives credence to who they are, their history and their worth as human beings. That is a goal that is always worth pursuing."

The team will return to the United States at the end of the summer and spend the next school year editing their footage. They will start by producing 15-minute video essays,available online, to generate interest in the project.

The team hopes to have a rough cut of their documentary by spring 2010, Jones said. After that, they will begin exploring the world of film festivals.

The team hopes this documentary will bridge the gap between generations in Mozambique. In a country whose citizens are almost divided by 30 years of war, the older generation is living with a plethora of stories and traditions from their youth - many stories that have yet to be told, Sherrod explained. Jones expressed the team's desire to prevent what Holton has described as "social-Alzheimer's" among the village elders. The students hope to capture the stories on film and use them to help the generations reconnect with one another.

When it comes to predicting the response they will receive from the Yao people, the team is "prepared to be unprepared," Sherrod said.

The team hopes that the Yao are inquisitive and see the advantages this project has to their culture, but they want them to feel empowered to say "yes" or "no."

"We hope this will entail more than just a sharing of technological skills, but instead, it will translate into a conversation," Sherrod said. "We are trying to [arrive in Africa with] as close to blank slates as we can and let this unfold as it will."

Browning emphasized that this is an opportunity to see what the Yao people want totell America.

"We're not going in with a script, saying 'Here, this is what you need to tell,'" Browning said. "It's an open-ended conversation, asking 'What do you want the world to know about the way your life, your community and your family is?'"

That element - giving theYao a voice - is the epicenter of the entire endeavor.

"The technological gap that's existed has left the microphone in the white person's hand," Jones said. "We just want to give microphones away."

For more information and a link to the team's blog, visit www.kujilana.com.

Three Rivers, Pages 123, 126 on 06/14/2009