Paper short abstract:

Intensive courses in collaborative visual anthropology among people who is experiencing the current crisis in the Sahel (Mali) is presented as a strategy for film making and to the much needed dialogue to find local mechanisms for conflict management!

Paper long abstract:

The present crisis in Sahel may be seen as a window of opportunity as it may force states and populations to question their systems and be more open for innovation. Much of the current situations stems from the colonizer’s successful imposition of a political grammar that deliberately ignores the colonized populations’ interests, perspectives and collective indigenous knowledge.

This paper explores processes where we as filmmaking researchers teaches workshop members filmmaking, based on ideas and exchanges in the group. Film narratives are created together through the process of filming and editing. The process where they are made and the film are used to encourage community dialogue to generate shared understandings and, convoke local mechanisms for peace.

Anthropologist is always working in-between positions. Collaboration does not mean equality, but equality in a reflexive learning process is in an ideal striving for. Our film strategy contains a focus on interpretation of shared experiences, these are interpreted and placed in a timeline for the audience to gradually discover meaning. In the process of engaged collaboration, where images are common "creative space" where the interest of film-makers and film-subjects meet. Coming to these creative spaces, where "regards are crossed" and new understandings are developed, is where we see potential to construct visual narratives through shared authorship. In the authors negotiations on how to construct the narrative, is where new knowledge and new solutions might be found.

The paper will build on examples from workshops undertaken in Bamako, Mali and Ngaoundere, Cameroon.