Emancipation

Working as a filmmaker towards human emancipation

There are many forms of oppression experienced by people in all walks of life, both in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere too.

Concerning oppression and my own journey of training as a filmmaker, I became conditioned to be aware of issues around me and to point my camera towards some of those issues that could manifest themselves before the camera. But I was also taught not to allow my particular camera perspective to become overly obsessed with details of an oppression or to try to brow beat an audience by fabricating scenes of oppression simply because I was inspired or driven by one example or by the total effect of the various forms of oppression in my neighborhood or on the earth in general. 

In other words, I became trained not to carry the multitude of frustrations of the society in which I lived into the midst of social circles where I was about to place myself as a filmmaker and then from there to project the multiplication of these - perhaps my own original issues, back towards the audiences. Carrying my issues and questions into a new social environment was considered in my particular film area of discipline as "loading the scene with my own imported issues". This was seen as an imposition upon film characters by those who brought me up as a filmmaker.

On the set of Tinpis Run, Waliya Village, Mount Hagen 1990, 

So we became formed and trained to look at crucial details of the human condition by looking and living with people for a bit until issues revealed themselves.

When the actual filming would begin - there are many ways to make this part collaborative as well so that the film characters are well aware of the nature of the film and at the end are also helping with its construction - it was assumed that by various means and processes, you knew the film and most of its parts already and you were now striving to get those particular scenes or their equivalent filmed and put away.

You could start a filming process with some previous knowledge about a particular social situation or without much previous awareness, but regardless of your starting point, you would proceed to construct the film together with your film subjects over a period of time that was convenient for everyone.

One would know that the community being filmed had taken some ownership of the film and its tools (including the filmmaker) when they would begin to think of things on their normal agenda and would begin to inform the filmmakers of these situations, like they would start to propose other possibilities and directions for the film. In other words your film subjects have become filmmakers too and the filmmaker naturally, also begins to have a sense of belonging to the place where they are filming. Each filmmaker has to feel whatever is right for oneself in terms of how deep they can immerse themselves into the social situations which are the subject of films.

The filmmaker is still director and producer, and you are still choosing what scenes to accept into the final film but the energy of the filmed community would at that point already flow with the filmmaker so one just went with that spirit. Scene by scene, one went uncovering pieces of a puzzle and through the building of film scenes finally a truthful representation of the reality of a human existence. These would later become apparent on the picture screen through the particular ways and choices of people's own story telling and by the demonstration of their own force of existence and will to survive.

The fabrication of facts inspired by my own political view of the way the earth was supposed to function was banned in the earlier part of my formation as a filmmaker.

Film scenes were meant to become empirical experiences for an audience, some of whom had never been at the places where I was filming. The evidence of such human condition, was to be brought to an audience by the mere honesty of an interaction and the fair and direct collaboration between filmmaker and film subject.

It was supposed to be the responsibility of a filmmaker to be respectful of an audience. A responsible filmmaker was not to seek to cheaply invoke the spirit of public rage or outrage through the skills we had acquired. We had to be respectful of our audiences and to allow them to form their own judgement as much as possible from the evidence that we were able to outline before them on a cinema screen.

What does any of that have to do with Emancipation?

"Whatever you do, do not think about Elephants". This is a saying from contemporary wisdom which teaches that if you do not want an "elephant in the room", then you would have to contrive to avoid the invocation of the spirit of the elephant.

For filmmakers, this is an important consideration when we are working towards human emancipation. The dangers of the filmmaker that lie in tampering with the chains that encumber human freedom is that while it may be correct to "create awareness" for a certain sector of society about the absence of freedom in their own lives, it would also be unfair to those same people if we had no answers or alternatives to offer them in return for disabusing them of their naïveté about their own lack of freedom.

The first problematic thing in dealing with human emancipation is in the cultural definition of freedom itself and the identification of the chains of oppression from the perspective of the speaker.

Once that barrier has been crossed and it has been established that an injustice exists in the lives of fellow humans, there lies in wait the still more problematic of issues - that of framing the matter and identifying the ideal processes towards a solution.

Again the solution has to be defined and a differentiation has to be made between solutions from an observer of injustice and the solutions from the victims of oppression themselves. To that effect there are again no easy answers and possibly a lot of new disappointments and perhaps even new injuries that may be unwittingly created by rushed solutions to perhaps quite complex and deep rooted causes of issues.

Surprisingly for some, there are also solutions to some oppressive situations which are offered by oppressors who may themselves want to be free from a cycle of oppression or violence. The filmmaker looks for them too because these are also possible solutions that help to repair the social fabric of broken lives and may help affected people to become able to live side by side again.

Left to right - Trisha, Francis and Hitch

 Again a filmmaker not trained in conflict resolution is advised not to set in motion processes beyond their own capacity to oversee. It is safer and less hurtful to film characters if the filmmaker might seek instead to inspire common respect amongst the people we film and maybe also seek to create some amount of respect for the craft that we practice.

So if domestic violence be the issue and we have come into a place to film and to deal with this issue which we the filmmakers do not support, it is important to remember now especially, that as filmmakers we may have to be in the company of some humans, usually men that we may actually have no respect for, due to the way they hurt other people. That we also have to frame these men in our pictures as we would frame any other human beings and that we would offer them the same forum as those that they oppress.

But where should we frame them and offer them forum and where should we deny them the forum to glorify their own oppression of other humans? And while we seek to be political in our effort to end a certain kind of oppression how articulate are we when we are in the situation so that in fact we do not end up shortening the horizons of those that we seek to set free?

Uncle Tuaimi and Hitch

Therein lies the dilemma for those who aspire to be "responsible" filmmakers. This is by no means an excuse for filmmakers to take no action or to be allowed into neglecting the use of their own craft and skills against oppression. But there are tried and tested methods of action which other filmmakers have followed and which can allow us to participate in seeking to serve human emancipation through various disciplines within our own profession.

Allowing the elephant to run amok

Sensationalism, through the use of imagery or other fictions and fabrications that create a cringing or maybe a shocking feeling in the audience about other societies, may not actually solve a human condition which a filmmaker may be aiming to improve. Sensationalism is also disrespectful to the society that is filmed for such purpose because it regards the people filmed simply as objects or figures for an ulterior illustration.

In film, the elephant is already waiting for us in our cameras. If we allow the elephant to behave in there as it pleases, or to run amok due to our own lack of application, then somehow we risk becoming tools of oppression and not for the emancipation of the human spirit. Further, if such elephant is then allowed to dominate the way we think and approach our collaboration with our film subjects then we may not be acting for human freedom.

Emancipation itself may mean the restoration of human dignity, which in itself, is not a promise of total human freedom.

Note: This article does not purport to cover outright human perversion, slavery or war.