“I am a 28-year-old young lady without a proper job to pay for my insurance and so is my friend Khadiga. I worry about what the future holds for Nigeria; for my unborn children and Khadiga’s, not about Islam or Christianity,” says Mercy.
What matters
Mercy identifies as Nigerian, African and Christian. She disapproves of how mainstream media frames Nigeria as a nation divided into a Muslim north and a Christian south. This motivated her to make her three-minute video, titled What Matters.
In her video, Mercy describes her life with Khadiga, her Muslim best friend who is from the north of Nigeria. She notes that there is more to the problems Nigerians face than religion.
“I thought of this as an opportunity to talk about my people, about Nigeria, about the fact that religion is not the issue, the issue is unemployment, water and population,” Mercy comments.
New tool of expression
At the Deutsche Welle Global Media conference, the workshop Digital Storytelling: A Message in a Nutshell explained what digital storytelling (DS) is. Being a relatively new technique of expression, DS was first used in a 1990 documentary by Ken Burns. Ever since, it has been picked up and utilised by artists and individuals to express their experiences.
As a method of expression, DS is a strong tool. It makes complex topics and experiences more easily comprehensible. It is easy to understand, fast to produce, original and authentic.
“We started simply with a laptop, an audio recorder, a camera, and video editing software. Now you can use tablets and one software for recording and editing,” says Guido Kowalski, the head of the Grimme-Institut, a project that runs DS workshops.
Sarolta Berke, one of the panellists of the workshop and an English teacher from Hungary, explains how the stories are scripted. “People need to write a clear script that avoids imitation and not necessarily follows linear progression,” she says.
Kowalski notes that DS is used in education, conserving cultural heritage and keeping chronicles. “It intersects with oral history and it can also be therapeutic when it is used talk about traumatic experiences,” he adds.
No matter what individuals think about their lives and experiences, there are always interesting things to tell; a personal adversity, a nation’s struggle or an expression of love, bliss and appreciation.
By Sarah El Masry, Egypt
Photo by Michele Lapini, Italy
