My Start - From Kakuma to London

My Start Project - Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya

AFRICA

My Start is a collaborative, creative Arts project working with Film Aid International. Since August 2012 My Start has run a series of Art, photography and film workshops in refugee camps each summer. These workshops encourage young refugees to share their experiences through the arts. The workshops teach practical skills, encourage creative expression and bring together the various ethnic and tribal refugee and host communities to work in a fun and dynamic way. 

Kakuma workshop

Kakuma workshop

United Kingdom

The art work produced at the camp is then exhibited in London schools. It acts as a powerful, visual resource that can be used across the curriculum to support learning on global issues. Issues such as conflict and conflict resolution, displacement and migration as well as promoting peace, tolerance and empathy. The exhibition encourages British students to share and discuss their own views on immigration, forced migration and refugees and challenges misconceptions and existing perspectives.

“The student response was fantastic and thoroughly engaging”

— Alex Costello, Art teacher, Park View School, UK.

                                                 London workshop

The British schools are encouraged to create response work including their own visual diaries and messages for the refugees at Kakuma. This work is then taken back and exhibited at the camp the following summer.  My Start is an inspiring project that brings local and international communities together through the arts.

Creating the Mural - Kakuma Refugee Camp

If you would like to support the work of My Start and their projects with FilmAid International then please contact Tania and Amy or visit My Start's Facebook page.

tania@emmanueljal.com; campbellgoldingamy@googlemail.com

FilmAid and Every Mother Counts at The Bulgari

Porter Magazine 2014

“It is fundamental to work together to save each and every woman.”

Statistics show that one woman dies every two minutes from complications during pregnancy and birth. This is why FilmAid was honored to join Christy Turlington Burns for Porter Magazine's event with Every Mother Counts at The Bulgari, to raise awareness of the vital need for the continued progress and preservation of maternal health. 

Driven by her own experience of pregnancy and giving birth, Christy founded Every Mother Counts with the aim of providing every mother with the same level of information and healthcare she had received when she needed it most. 

A touching speech was given on behalf of FilmAid by FilmAid’s UK Chair, Sian Sutherland, and FilmAid’s Country Director for Kenya, Stella Suge. 

Emphasizing the common ground shared by the two organizations, Sian discussed Every Mother Counts and FilmAid’s important contributions to safeguarding women’s health and dignity by the provision of information and the giving of hope, life skills, and voices.

Stella spoke of her first-hand experience working on a FilmAid maternal health program based in two of the largest refugee camps in the world, Kakuma and Dadaab in Kenya. With over half a million people living as refugees in Kenya, and over half of these people being women, maternal health necessitates urgent action. Stella expressed that she had seen women die as a result of absence of knowledge and information, a situation that was complicated further by cultural issues relating to how women receive professional hospital treatment. In light of these experiences, FilmAid devised a program that included creating an informative film made by and for refugees. The film focussed on informing viewers of the critical need and benefits of maternal health, thus contributing to the ongoing welfare of mothers and thier children. 

The Two Faces of January – UK Premiere in association with FilmAid

On May 13th, 2014 Working Title and Studio Canal teamed up with FilmAid to screen the UK Premiere of The Two Faces of January.

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The Two Faces of January is Hossein Amini’s directorial debut. Famous for his work on Drive and The Wings of the Dove, for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Writing - Adapted Screenplay, Amini’s latest thriller transports us to the ruinous beauty of Greece in 1962. The film uncovers the tangled secrets of a glamorous American couple, the MacFarlands (Kirsten Dunst and Viggo Mortensen) and their tour guide, Rydal (Oscar Isaac) who has a propensity towards small time con work. Amini engineers some gorgeous scenes, as the group travel across 1960s Greece and gradually become embedded in a web of lies, deception and murder.

Kirsten Dunst plays her role exceptionally well, demonstrating uncertainty and insecurity as she learns some unappealing truths about her companions. Meanwhile Mortensen and Isaac’s painfully competitive and almost Oedipal relationship dictates the thrilling journey of the story and its ultimate finale. 

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The premiere, which was held at the Curzon Mayfair, was an enormous success filled with cast, crew and FilmAid supporters. FilmAid screened a short film before the movie, which invited the audience to contemplate the significance of film beyond the cinema walls, and imagine how it can bring about positive change for communities in need around the world. 

FilmAid are enormously grateful for this opportunity and would like to thank Working Title, Studio Canal and Hossein Amini for their generosity and support.