Aliko & Ambai

This project originated at the Centre for Social and Creative Media at the University of Goroka in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea where I was a lecturer. I was in a position to encourage young writers in PNG to develop their scripts, and I began a more thorough investigation of ways to develop a screenplay idea. I took the approach of describing plot, classical narrative design, the importance of conflict and resolution in drama, character development, and screenplay structure. However, the narrative content was never mandated or imposed. Students were given simple exercises to explore personal biography, conflict and resolution. These produced some interesting examples of Melanesians dealing with contentious themes in ways that might not be anticipated by a western audience. In particular, issues involving tribal conflict, troubled relationships, unexpected pregnancy, tensions between a daughter and her parents when they didn’t approve of her boyfriend, the tragedy that can result from forced marriages, and police brutality. Resolutions to many of these conflicts involved Melanesian ideas about exchange, compensation and reciprocity, which were explored in creative and culturally relevant ways.

The stories that emerged in the student screenplays came from their own lives or were a combination of biography and fiction, which is encouraged in writing a screenplay. I observed that many of these issues arose out of the power dynamics of gender and the violent or emotionally charged responses to these dynamics in a local situation. Wanting to pursue these themes in a feature film with production funding support, led to an application for a Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS) Innovation Fund. Relevance to one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was also a key factor. This project chose to address the goal to promote gender equality and empower women. The project was asked to take a gender-balanced and gender-sensitive approach and adhere to gender equality principles. An additional crosscutting focus on engaging youth was a strong component of our application. Looking at how to meet the expectations of the funder and keeping in mind the kind of narratives students had been producing, the application proposed addressing the issue of youth and gender-based violence through a narrative feature film production that supported local development of content and film production capacity building. Our application was successful.

A key thread in the C4D process for creating content is to be responsive, to establish common ground and include community participation. To define the community is a crucial step. In this project “the community” shifted in different phases of the project, but the first community established was a community of writers. I was able to bring several excellent writers, who had attended my classes and already graduated, back to a workshop where we were able to discuss the issue of gender-based violence and cinematic story structure principles. From this workshop a director, Diane Anton, and screenwriter, Jenno Kanagio, were chosen and I mentored them through the screenplay development process from which emerged Aliko & Ambai, a coming-of-age story of two young women, who become friends as they overcome tribal conflict, abuse and arranged marriage. Anton, Kanagio and members of the CSCM staff helped to gather a group of collaborators with links to local communities where we cast and shot the production on multiple locations. By producing a film and analysing the narratives and practice that emerged from that production process we were able to explore how social change is currently understood and engaged by young people in PNG (Mark Eby).