This film tells the story of an extraordinary young boy, called Phendulani, who survived the streets of a South African Township to become a high-flying student. What does he think about the state of South African today? What does he think about the country's dark past and what are his hopes for the future? Follow Phendulani on a journey through his neighbourhood with filmmaker Paul Cooke.
Over the past two years, we've worked with the Bishop Simeon Trust to use participatory filmmaking to help young people raise awareness of issues that are important to them but that they feel are not properly represented in the mainstream media, or that are not discussed widely enough in their community.
What we noticed from both groups is that the majority of the comics that we received back were focused on rape, gender inequality and domestic abuse, child abuse and drug abuse. It was also very apparent that many of the youths had used the comics as a means of expressing things that had happened to them personally, or people very close to them. For us, this further reinforced that fact that we had to be careful to not gloss over these issues and make it seem that we felt that xenophobia was more important. Particularly as we could see that this was the first time that many of the youths had been given the opportunity and the space to work through these issues openly and with others. It was therefore evident that this exercise was the start of a trust building process and that the success of our project would rely upon this trust being maintained. We have not included all of the comics due to their varying stages of completion as well as the graphic and sensitive content that some of them contained. However we have selected a range of them so that you can get a broader sense of the issues that came up. Click on "item details" to find out more about each comic.
Have a look at this Yarn story to find out more about what we've been doing in South Africa.
We've been involved with a wide range of projects in the UK and abroad. What they have in common is that they are all focussed on dealing with the legacy of 'difficult pasts' and also on supporting marginalised groups to effect change in their lives.
Have a look at this Yarn story to find out more about the participatory filmmaking projects led by the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures, at the University of Leeds where Paul Works.