Mekong Arts Festival: Catalyst for social changes
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Yang Kun, a visual anthropologist, and one of the founding members of Yunfest, a documentary film festival based in Yunnan, had reflected on the participatory visual education project launched by Yunfest.
The project, which aims to train villagers with basic digital video (DV) camera skills, has witnessed surprisingly original works from the trainees after they go back to their own villages and star shooting on issues of their interest.
"Glacier" is a film in case. The brainchild of Tibetan trainee Zhaxi Nima, the film tells the story of holy mountain Kawagebo in northwest Yunnan's Deqin region, which has seen its glaciers melting over the years as a result of tourism and global warming.
Shot from the perspectives of pilgrims, travelers and local villagers, the film tries to present the argument that locals, who were blamed for the deteriorating state of their environment, have been practicing environmental protection in ages through their own gut instincts and a respect for the Nature.
In Yang's view, unlike mass media which has been disseminating information from urban areas to the rural region, small media such as DV is vital in getting the weak rural voices heard by the general public.
"Tibetan villagers' love for a natural environment as shown in the film is far ahead of western environmentalists, but the message was rarely picked up by the mass media," he added.
It is no wonder that the film became a favorite when during the Yunfest screening in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the major big cities in China. After it was shown in Tibetan villages, some villagers have gone even further by setting up their own NGO and website for research on their own culture and tradition, as well as organizing a Kawagebo culture festival.
"These direct, powerful, moving images could help urban people view the world in a different light, hence narrowing the gap of urban-rural understanding," said Yang. He believes that against the backdrop of massive social transformation in China, DV could play an important role in preserving and reviving folk cultures and tradition.
During the Festival, such modern arts stories are abound. A Thai artist has turned a common legend about Sheela from the Mekong region into a theater work to get young audiences relate to the modern reality of child labor and trafficking; Khanda Arts'n Theater Company combines street interviews and statistics on HIV/AIDS with its dance "For a Little Less Noise Mae Nam"; Myanmar and Lao artists endeavor to preserve their traditional puppet theater...
Even the 100 or so children and youth delegates attending a parallel forum have been motivated at the Festival. Gao Yijia, a 17 year-old senior high student from China's Yunnan, said: "It's such fun. We are playing games all the time. I'll try to take my new skills back home to my fellow students and share with them."
And for J'Mee Katanyag, a freshman at college in the Philippines, all the child-friendly workshops are a "release" for disadvantaged children. Although the Children and Youth Bloc at the Festival is no novelty for her, who has been an activist at the children's program under the Philippines Educational Theater Association, she still sees the changes on some of the delegates.
"It's not necessarily for them to be emotional, you don't see their tears or anger, but you just notice the changes," she added.
"We hope they (children and youths) would be a force for change when they get back to their own community," said Chen Shu, communications officer for the China office of Save the Children UK, another organizer of the five-day event.
Indeed, as more people are inspired as the Mekong Arts and Media Festival comes to an end on Friday, it's only a prelude for changes in the sub-region.
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