By Bethsheba Achitsa
Published October 18, 2011

A unique initiative of filmmaking with social impact shall be introduced to Africa, India and Europe via online conference on October 24, 2011.The organisers, ZeLIG School for Documentary, Television and New Media (Italy) in collaboration with Formedia (India) and Africa Medical Research Foundation (Italy/Kenya), request interested parties to register via international.esodoc.org for them to participate in the online conference.

A second online conference will follow on November 7, 2011 as a prelude to a major residential workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, in January 2012. The workshop is planned to feature lectures and case studies through an innovative didactic approach in various story-telling techniques and multi-platforms such as Participatory Video, New Media and Mobile Phones and in pitching skills.

The training initiative, known as EsoDoc International, targets African, Asian and European filmmakers, new media professionals and Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) representatives interested in developing social documentary projects suitable for the international market.

Any one interested in attending the residential training in Nairobi (January 28-February 4, 2012) must apply for the opportunity on international.esodoc.org by November 16, 2011. The training will be supervised by international experts whose expertise is to plan, create and distribute documentary films and cross-media projects with a social impact.

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While the October 24, 2011 internet Conference is expected to tackle visual language in Africa, India and Europe through Participatory video and Cross-media, the subsequent November 7, 2011 one will look at financing and distribution for factual in Africa, India and Europe.

The residential workshop–that offers frontal lectures and seminars on topics around the use of new media in the creation and distribution of documentaries and on the collaboration between media-makers and NGO/NPO collaborators as well as case-studies, project-related training and tutorial assistance–is scheduled to take place in the Nairobi suburb of Dagoretti, at the AMREF Child Development Centre, where participants and trainers will meet personally and finalise projects.
The workshop is open to 15 participants, five from each target-region: Africa, India, Europe.

So who may apply to EsoDoc?

The prospectus says that “ESoDoc is intended for professionals who are committed to the goal of social change, who are responsive to the new ways that film is achieving it and who want to develop their own documentary film projects across a 360 degree spectrum. We are looking for documentary filmmakers and producers, NGO and NPO sector professionals who are willing to propose or implement communication projects and New Media Professionals who want to realize www projects according to the spirit of ESoDoc or collaborate with others.”

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“With documentary being the most common genre in Kenya,” Ogova Ondego of Lola Kenya Screen says, “the EsoDoc training is a great way to help improve the nature of documentary filmmaking in the country in particular and Africa at large. Independent producers and young filmmakers are certainly going to find the workshop beneficial”.

The Lola Kenya Screen audiovisual media festival, skill-development and market for children and youth in eastern Africa that also hosts the IPO-Eastern Africa network for independent audiovisual media content producers, creative and cultural entrepreneurs, social transformers, media literacy educators, broadcasters and festival organisers is an associate partner of EsoDoc that was established as European Social Documentary in 2004.

EsoDoc has since trained 200 filmmakers. The trained filmmakers like Lucian Muntean and Natasa Stankovic (Lunam Docs) whose films like JOURNEY OF A RED FRIDGE and MBAMBU AND THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON have won awards at various film festivals, including Lola Kenya Screen.

Similar training workshops to the one planned for Nairobi in 2012 have been conducted in Urlati (Romania) and Oostende (Belgium) in May and July 2011, respectively.

EsoDoc International, that gives importance to strategies and methodologies that support a different perspective and a “view from inside” on Africa, India or Europe, a change of position in the narration of a specific story, is conducted with the support of MEDIA Mundus programme of the European Union.