You are here: Home | Resources | Articles | Putting the World to Rights

Putting the World to Rights

Other articles in "Articles"

by Philip Moore
Think Big Think Big Last week saw the premiere of education charity WORLDwrite’s latest two films Think Big and A Letter to Geldolf. Gadflies of the charity community, WORLDwrite’s provocative films and their unswerving commitment to championing global equality offer Western audiences a view of the world we don’t often get to see.

Screening at the Rich Mix, a cross-cultural arts and media centre in East London, the vibrant venue was well placed to create a buzz for the evening’s screenings. Welcoming a mass of enthusiastic people, whilst unfortunately having to turn others away, the event seemed to suggest that the awaiting crowd were after a different sort of media, offering alternatives to the generally negative and cynical images of poorer countries.

Introducing the films, director of WORLDwrite Ceri Dingle spoke of how the no/lo budget docus illustrate their “uncompromising stance and campaign for North-South equality.”

Having begun back in 1992, WORLDwrite, a largely volunteer run organisation, started as a series of exchange programmes with schools and young people. Documenting their excursions, filmmaking began in 1998 with their first education film being produced after a trip to Brazil. It has only been more recently – since 2003 – that the organisation has actively decided to pursue film as the method and medium for communicating their mission.
Letter to Geldof Letter to Geldof The first film of the evening was Letter to Geldolf – a pie in the face of a documentary, damning Geldolf’s unfulfilled promises to the people of Ajumako-Bisease, Ghana, after having been made Chief of Development. In the film Ceri and the WORLDwrite crew visit the town a year after the ‘Geldolf in Africa’ TV series dropped by. Interviewing the local town’s folk and the chief of the area, it becomes apparent that Geldolf’s promises of development have not been awarded and that the people are still waiting on him.

Perhaps most tellingly is the story the Chief recounts of a visit to England and his search for a book in WH Smiths. Whilst looking around in the shop he came across the TV book of the series ‘Geldolf in Africa’.

The chief states how “he is using our image”, the nature of the smash and grab approach of TV filmmaking being made apparent.

The second film was again primarily concerned with development, but instead of taking a form of a filmed ‘letter’, it acted as more of a show and tell feature. Think Big, composed of snapshots of Ghana, visibly eschews the politics of pity – a common symptom of imagining “Africa” in the West - in favour of depicting the optimism and desire for change from the many Ghanaians featured in the film. Think Big shows us images of a country in which things are happening, buildings are being made, and development and modernity are not just a notion, but a reality for many.

Again the images, constructed from an alternative view of an African country, are not imbibed with the implicit fatalism and poverty of underdevelopment we are so often met with when being told about “Africa”, but are instead depictions of a place where optimism, spirit and action do in fact exist.

In this sense, the WORLDwrite documentaries are refreshing in their perspective. Although the films have a roughness to them they are working under a different rubric which makes them compelling in their own right.

No doubts, their spiky nature makes for some interesting viewing, but their intentions are never malicious. The approach the films take – and the topics they focus on – mean that, whether you agree with them or not, their films (and their wider project) will get you thinking and will certainly provoke debate, which, in my opinion is an essential quality of documentary filmmaking.
Find out more about the work of WORLDwrite on their website: www.worldwrite.org.uk

Back to Articles