by Su Kim and David Felix Sutcliffe
“Nothing is more meaningful—more human, really—than our efforts to tell each other about ourselves…” Susan Orlean
In June 2011, Su Kim and I, David Felix Sutcliffe, had the extraordinary honor of collaborating with Filmaid and The Great Globe Foundation when we were given the opportunity to lead a series of personal documentary workshops with a group of Somali and Ethiopian individuals living in Dadaab Refugee Camp. Su and I are both documentary filmmakers from Brooklyn NY and recently released a film together (called ADAMA, broadcasted on PBS World in November ‘11) and were eager for the opportunity to share a few of the lessons we’ve learned on our own projects with members of our workshop. Although we originally intended on helping the participants produce just one short group piece, we ultimately ended up producing five pieces in total with the students. Each of these films – self-portraits, essentially – offer a rich and open window into the hearts, minds and histories of remarkable people who, as it turns out, taught us much more than we could ever teach them.
We began our workshop by offering members of the group the chance to practice interviewing each other. These interviews began with a very simple prompt: to spend a minute silently reflecting on either a very joyful or a very difficult memory, and to then share that memory. From here, members of the workshop began the process of diving into each other and, ultimately, the process behind documentary storytelling. As the interviewees began to speak, their memories tumbled out in rich, fascinating and tangled form. Periodically, we would pause the interview and ask the other members of the group to discuss what they’d just heard, to process these memories, and consider possible directions for the interview. How can we give shape to this story? What struck them? What was interesting? What do we want to know more about? Where are the gaps? “He mentioned that his father was killed,” Akune pointed out during a pause in Liban’s interview. “Maybe we should find out more about that.”
For so many of the men and women living in Dadaab, the ordeals they have each experienced (and continue to experience as residents of the world’s largest refugee camp) are so common that the specifics of these ordeals, as well as the depth of the pain they have all endured, is very easily overlooked, or worse- mistaken for something ordinary. By stepping in front of a camera to tell their story to a group of peers, and then collectively seek a way to organize those stories, to identify the tragedies and traumas that they have each experienced, they are given the chance to recognize, and celebrate, their own accomplishments and courage.
We are so incredibly proud to have met these individuals and to share the films they have created, both with those people familiar with Filmaid’s extraordinary work and, we hope, beyond. The work that Filmaid is doing in Dadaab, and around the world, is truly extraordinary and absolutely vital. By giving these men and women the resources and support to craft and tell their own stories through film, to be creators in a world where there is very nearly nothing to create with, Filmaid has empowered them with the ability to sail above and beyond the word that so painfully reminds them of everything they want to forget –refugee– and reminds them of all that they are, and can be: human.