Participatory Video at the UN Global Migration Film Festival: engaging displaced indigenous Venezuelans in filmmaking at a shelter in Brazil

Resumen

From August 2017 to September 2018, IOM (International Organization for Migration) experimented for the first time, participatory video methodology integrated in the activities of its Global Migration Film Festival (GMFF). The main purpose was to innovate and enable communities in the frontlines of displacement and different humanitarian action settings into creating through film their own narratives with their own hands and style. Their videos would then integrate the film festival that traditionally curates professionally produced movies. Amongst the six countries and areas with displaced population reached by the project is Roraima, Brazil, that has been hosting thousands of Venezuelans that crossed the Brazilian border fleeing from degrading living conditions. In May 2018 the authors spent a week at Pintolândia Indigenous Shelter located in the capital Boa Vista, facilitating displaced Venezuelans of the ethical groups of Warao and Eñepas make their own films to be screened locally and around the world. Furthermore, the facilitators would observe the potential benefits of the method to generate some level of social cohesion and integration between the participating displaced communities that came from different regions of Venezuela.