'Peru Conversations with Mother Earth' is a powerful film relating the Andean cosmovision. Quechua videographers documented seasonal changes, hail, melting glaciers, christian fundamentalism, and other threats to their culture, livelihoods and landscapes.
The Voice of the Batwa PHOTOSTORY is a detailed description of the process through which a group of Batwa, from various squatter camps in Uganda, created a powerful film documenting the discrimination and marginalisation they face.
The Batwa are an indigenous people of the Great Lakes region of tropical Africa. Formerly hunter-gatherers, they were expelled from their ancestral forests to make way for conservation and tourism projects. They experience extreme racial discrimination from their neighbours, poverty, landlessness and unequal access to education and healthcare.
'Voice of the Batwa' was planned and filmed by members of the Batwa people during a Participatory Video project facilitated by InsightShare. Part of this film was aired on Ugandan television as well as being screened to local and national politicians, donors and NGOs.
InsightShare participated in a course on community-based conservation and ethnoecology in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, that was held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology.
In this article Stephen Hancock gives an extensive and inspiring description of the PV process, drawing from his personal experiences, working alongside Nick Lunch on a PV project in India. Through his detailed description of the whole process, it becomes clear how the PV method helped them to facilitate a genuine and participative communication loop by providing the local illitarate farmers and nomads with a tool to express their concerns related to environmental change and bringing them their face to face with scientists and NGO staff.
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