Testimony and Witness - Witness presentation
Author: redactie redactie
We all know how powerful the media are. It is the media that not only tries to tell us what to think about certain subjects, it also tells us what subjects to think about. We see what they choose to show us. The subjects, issues and topics they do now show you however might be just as important as the ones they do show you, sometimes even more important.
There are a number of reasons why we see what we see and hear what we hear, read what we read, and what information we do not get easy access to. These might be commercial interests. The news, like any other programme on TV, has to get the big ratings to get the big advertisers. So they choose their topics with commercial interests in mind. They decide what most people might care enough about not to flick to another channel, and that is what they show you. Political interests also have a lot to do with it of course. More and more, we are getting proof that our (mass) media are less and less independent.
Witness tries, among other things, to be a counter to this. To get the news out there that the mainstream media do not cover. To raise awareness, both with the general public and the decision makers. In short, what the programme does is, it gives people who feel they need it recording equipment (digital cameras and such), access to the internet and so on. They will only go where they are invited, where people ask them for help, and do not force themselves on anyone. They help the people help themselves, so to speak. Some of the examples shown at the festival were a film by the organisation Books not Bars in the USA, who made a short film to get awareness for the fact that more money is invested in the prison system than in schools and other forms of eduacation. Needless to say the largest part of the prison population are young blacks and latinos. Also shown was the film Rule of the Gun in Sugarland, by Witness partner Nakamata in the Phillipines, about the military junta against tribemembers trying to get back their ancestral lands, a film by Burma Issues about IDPs (Internally Dislocated People) in Burma, people who are chased of their land and now have no place to live in Burma but are not refugees because they can not get into Thailand, And a few short films by Witness partner Amazonwatch, which tries to raise awareness for the incredible environmental mess big oil companies like Enron and Texaco have left in the Amazon basin.
At Testimony and Witness earlier in the day we also saw footage by RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), the Shared Footage Group, a collective that has put together footage on the riots in Gujarat early 2002, available to all who will use it to promote harmony, and the Imagine IC project done by Jenny Wesly with women from the Antilles and Suriname living in the Bijlmer in Amsterdam.
Most interesting was to hear about the results achieved by using video in this way. In the Nakamata case for instance (as unboubtably in other cases), the material was not only used to raise awareness, but will also be used as evidence in forthcoming trials. The material itself has ensured that those trials will indeed take place, where there has never been such a trial before (according to Witness, at least 100 to 300 murders have gone unpunished where killers were easily named and identified. The authorities did nothing). But as the representative for Amazonwatch pointed out, sometimes the success lies not so much in short term results, but in just keeping a cause going and the awareness of it alive. However, one of the results of an Amazonwatch film had been a swinging vote by one female bank executive, thereby cancelling millions of dollars worth of loans for Enron. Not a meagre result by any means!
When talking about using the media in this particular way, there is of course no way of getting around the (intended) audience. Who these films are made by is important, but also who they are made for. As in the case of Nakamata, sometimes one of the purposes of the films is documentation, testimony, evidence, but in most cases the films are in some way used to raise awareness. Who will you show your film to to get this awareness? What struck me as one of the great strengths of Witness is that they know their intended audiences very well and know how to speak to them. Sometimes you just want to get your footage in the news, but at other times you want more specific people to see it, like government representatives, or as in the Amazonwatch case, corporate executives. It is because Witness knows their audience so well that their films are so effective. The films are obviously put together with their audience in mind. A specific audience requires a specific visual language, a specific mode of adress, a thing Witness seems to understand very well.
All in all it was a very impressive presentation.
If you are interested in the camera as a social and political weapon, be sure to check out Seeing is believing; handicams, human rights and the news, part of the Global Conflicts 1 screening saturday at 17.00
Suzanne Rademaker