Bridging the Multicultural Media Gap

Sierra Leoneon filmmaker,
Karim Bah

http://standardtimespress.net/cgi-bin/artman/publish/printer_4341.shtml
(highlight the text)

Babylon Illusion - a vision of a different culture with an accompanying assumption that that culture is better, contains more opporunities, and that life is more exciting there as opposed to where they are.

Karim Bah made a film Babylon Illusion that contains interview footage of Africans in western countries, UK, and the USA, where these gold diggers are complaining about how hard the life is there. The documentary is in a sense critiquing them, but also it is an attempt to desolve this illusion that Africans have that "the west is better", and it is an attempt to initiate actions that lead to pride in their own country.

Zenabu and I intend to investigate what type of media create such an illusion. Americans suffer from a similar illusion, based on adventure, excitement, or violence and war.

Goal; 10+ minutes of quality video footage containing a mixture of new media arts, politics, and entertainment that explains this "Babylon Illusion" that westerners have of the African world and that Africans have of the western world.

Media bridges this gap as long as it is not misunderstood. However, a gap may not be able to be bridged if there is no old media material to build it with. The Missing Link we deal with today is literacy.

Material;
-Video footage of West African interviews
-Audio clips of interviews
-West African music
-Interviews of Lawrentians effected by this multicultural media
-Youtube clips
-Skype examples
-Written script
-stories

Technology;
-MAC
-Canon SLR-like w/1 hr video footage
-LaCie backup hard drive
-flashdrive 4GB
-Final Cut
-projector