Community Media Initiative
i4d Film Festival and Participatory Video Training 2007
GeSCI is one of the key partners of the Community Media initiative launched by CSDMS i4d Film Festival at GK3, held on 9-10 December 2007 at Hotel Crowne Plaza, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. GeSCI is a part of the multi-stakeholder partnership holding financial and intellectual stake in this initiative. GeSCI’s work with the ministries of Education in Africa, Latin America and India, provides a practical platform for engagement with local governments and civil society organisations.
The i4d Film Festival first came into being during our annual eINDIA event, to add a new dimension to our scope of work and explored the visual medium. The first film festival was held in August 2007 and was an enormous success, bringing together over 20 films on a single day. The film makers ranged students from a local school in Uttar Pradesh, India to street children from the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. GK3 is the largest ICT4D event in the world bringing together over 1500 delegates from across the world. Our second film festival was held along with GK3 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the 9th and 10th of December 2007. The event was supported by GeSCI and IDRC.
Inauguration
The film festivals are a part of the larger Community Media initiative of CSDMS. The summer conference, eINDIA2007, also hosted the Community Radio track. The second i4d Film Festival expanded the horizons of the initiative. Along with the screening of over 30 excellent films, we also hosted the first capacity building effort – Participatory Video training – of this initiative. The event was inaugurated by Anbalagan K, Undersecretary, International Relations Division, Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications, Malaysia. The inaugural panel also hosted Walter Fust, Director-General, SDC, Abdul Waheed Khan, Assistant Director-General, UNESCO, Ashish Garg, Country Coordinator – India, GeSCI, Michael Clarke, Director, ICT4D, IDRC and MP Narayanan, President, CSDMS. The panel discussed the various Millennium Development Goals from their organisational perspectives. The discussions also took account of how the visual medium can contribute to development and communication.
Panel Discussion – Bottom up approach
On December 9th, a workshop was held on Bottom up approach – Participatory video lending a voice to the voiceless. The session was moderated by Mirta Lourenco, Chief of Section, Media Capacity-Building, Communication Development, UNESCO. The panellists represented diverse backgrounds in media and communication. They consisted of – Heather Ford, Executive Director, iCommons; Rana Ghose, PhD Scholar, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex; Denis Jaromil Rojo, Open Source Developer, Dyne.org Foundation; Sajan Veniyoor, Prasar Bharati; and Upendra Prasad Aryal, Equal Access Nepal.
The session examined the opportunities and challenges of the use of the visual medium as a tool for development. Video as a tool can be empowering tools to not only communicate information to the masses but also to provide a voice to the unheard. New developments in Internet technology allows for such content to be made available globally, easily. However, this content aces regulatory, accessibility and IPR challenges.
Over the two days, over 30 films were screened. The capacity building session on participatory video had 22 participants.
The objectives of the training seminar were as follows:
To provide participants with a one day intensive training session of how to shoot, script, and edit a story using digital video as the medium.
To apply these skills via shooting and editing a scripted story based on GK3 over the three days of the conference.
After the one-day intensive session, participants were expected to shoot an edit a three-minute piece on a theme of their choice over the course of GK3. To edit, a space was provided in the GK3 venue, the Interactivity Support Desk, to allow participants to drop in and edit their content on either their own laptops or the six laptops that were provided to all GK3 participants as a component of the Desk.
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