Client Shares Rich Experience Filming in Africa
January 22nd, 2007
While shooting a documentary in West Africa this summer I sent myself emails like diary entries. I was changing on a cellular level and needed an outlet to grapple with mixed feelings and awakenings inside of myself. After returning to the Kootenays, while in post production with the film I would read the emails to remind myself of what I had experienced in the moment.
One email read, "my hand was shaking today and I could barely keep the camera still while listening to stories of women being raped by soldiers, families being killed in the genocide of Rwanda and pregnant women being refused beds in hospitals because they are HIV positive...I feel sick and I'm sure I will have nightmares if I close my eyes." Another email read, "today I visited the flooded areas of Dakar, families living in two feet of water, buying trash from an old man's horse cart to soak up the water...the children love the camera they swarm around me when I have it out and giggle when I show them video footage of themselves...a young woman who was beside me decided to share her lunch with the children and when she brought out a banana and a bottle of orange juice from her bag, the children began to fight, pushing one another, hands flying everywhere trying to grab the food... I want to cry tonight and all I can think about is my eight year old son at home safe and well fed."
The next email entry was written after a long and unnerving day in a refugee camp where Senegalese families are living because of being displaced from the flooding: "the military threatened to seize my cameras and my passport today because of filming in the camps... the living conditions are deplorable, four washrooms for 10,000 people, the children are sick and have no medical care...we were forced to leave the compound and meet with delegates from the camp away from the military base...the people from the camp came running up over a hill to where we were standing and hundreds of people circled us, raising their arms and cheering in victory...I could barely keep my balance in the sea of people, never mind the camera rolling."
This last entry I will share was written after riding into downtown Dakar in a cab with a good friend from Kenya, “Fatma told me today she was circumcised when she was 11...she nodded that it was okay for me to turn the camera on... my stomach was nervous... she told me the story of how her father drove her to a doctor in Kenya and how she was forced to participate in a harmful ritual she believes is cemented to the damaging belief that women can only be married if they are circumcised...she doesn't know what to call it, female genital mutilation seems so cold and degrading for her and her body and circumcision indicates it's an accepted practice...she is angry and torn between her culture and her own awakenings and I am reeling with emotion and outrage."
All of this and the sweetest mangoes I ever tasted, grown in a rich, deep African culture, proud with music, art and rituals of friendship and family. I crossed over a line at some point from being a filmmaker and business owner to being a friend and a sister who feels the raw need to do something more than just make a film. I have a home in Africa now and an extended family.
Rachel Schmidt is an emerging Canadian filmmaker with an extensive background in social work and activism. With the help of Community Futures, she began her own film production company here in the Kootenays almost a year ago and has never looked back. Her film, Conversations from a Young African Women’s Revolution will screen in Africa in December and here in Canada in the new year.
Contact her at info@girledgefilms.com or for more info on her film projects visit her website at www.girledgefilms.com
Link: www.girledgefilms.com