Amplifying Voices from Rural Africa

The district of Samfya is an unlikely place for a cultural revolution. It's a ten-hour drive from Zambia's capital city of Lusaka, a resoundingly rural region where most people earn a living as subsistence farmers or fishermen. But in this remote corner of northern Zambia, a group of young women are making bracingly honest films that challenge injustices in their community in an unprecedented way.

The Samfya Women Filmmakers is a filmmaking collective that takes on challenging topics such as AIDS and domestic violence in an environment where women's voices are rarely heard. Most of the women in the group were born into extreme poverty. Many were deprived of a formal education. And yet, through the dynamic medium of film, their stories are now being heard by thousands of people — people in their own community, and people around the globe, in places as far-flung as Korea, Croatia and the Caribbean. Their goal: to spark dialogue about sensitive issues in order to mobilize change in their communities.

The Samfya Women Filmmakers' first film, I've Found My Way, tells the true story of a member of the filmmaking collective named Penelope, a young woman who loses nearly everything. First her parents, then her home and belongings and finally her opportunity to be educated, before meeting a local headmaster who helps change her fate through a return to school.

The filmmakers have screened the film for more than 3,000 people in their district, and it is making a tremendous impact on the community as well as on the filmmakers' lives. Two years after the film screened, the health clinic in their district of Samfya reports that there has been a 65 percent increase in people seeking HIV/AIDS tests — a testament to the power of film as a tool for social change. One woman who was forced to drop out of school as a young child has enrolled in literacy classes. Some of the women are pursuing university degrees. And Penelope herself is thriving: she is the manager of an IT center, where she is introducing hundreds of girls and young women to the vast potential of technology. In September 2009, she received the Goldman Sachs/Fortune magazine Global Women Leaders award, which honors women who are making great strides in improving their communities.

The women's journey as emerging filmmakers is captured in the award-winning documentary, Where the Water Meets the Sky, written by Jordan Roberts (March of the Penguins) and narrated by Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman.  On Mar. 16, 2010 Camfed, Tonic and the International Museum of Women, will be holding a free screening at the Cubberley Theater in Palo Alto, at 4000 Middlefield Road, sponsored by the Palo Alto Human Relations Commission.

The Samfya Women Filmmakers is one of two women's film collectives that has been launched with the support of Camfed, a nonprofit organization that fights poverty and AIDS by educating girls and investing in economic opportunities for them. The first group, The Learning Circle, was started in northern Ghana in 2003, with the production of three short films-and as in Zambia, the experience has been transformative for the women involved. Their voices have become bolder, and they have developed the courage and confidence to achieve their dreams.

The Samfya Women Filmmakers have just completed their second film, The Hidden Truth, a stark exploration of the toll that domestic violence is taking on families in rural Zambia, and it has been selected to debut at the San Francisco International Women's Film Festival in April. For more information, please visit http://www.sfwff.com

Photos courtesy of Camfed.