Syndicate: VIRTUAL BORDER

["Arthur Bueno" <abueno@v2.nl>]

Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2000 11:45:12 +0000
From: Manu Luksch <manu@sil.at>

>VIRTUAL BORDERS
>Hybrid film - internet project with and about the Akha people
>http://www.ambientTV.net/akha
>by Manu Luksch
>
>
>Mostly, documentary filmmakers attempt to minimise the influence of
>their presence. This project is driven by the idea that the dynamics of
>media are not only able to capture a story but also create a situation
>from which the people to be documented will continue to profit: in
>VIRTUAL BORDERS, the documentary introduced the internet as an effective
>solution to provide an affordable audio link for a people divided by
>international borders, as well as to make an archive of their
>traditional knowledge and oral history available in an audio online
>database. The creation of the internet link at this meeting also allowed
>the Akha to explore the appropriateness of this technology, as an
>affordable and legal alternative to the problems they face in relying on
>their oral culture in the face of an ever more embracing global culture.
>
>This film serves as documentary, giving facts and communicating
>impressions and hopefully eliciting a reaction from the audience.
>However the starting point of this film is the establishment of 'online
>facilities' as a means to communicate for the Akha people. A film always
>has an end while reality continues. Here the end leads to the 'online
>interface', and the audience will be able to influence how the story
>continues by using the Internet.
>
>===============================================
>
>The Akha people, have a population of 3 million spread across the
>borders of five
>national territories: China PDR, Laos PDR, Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma
>(Myanmar). At the beginning of the year 2000 a meeting in Jinghong,
>Yunnan, China brought them together.
>
>The Akha identify as one people through their ?tribal? history, rather
>than the ?modern? world history which created the nation states they
>live in. The most important tool for shared experience was the
>traditional knowledge transmitted orally to the successive generations.
>More recently, this tradition has found support (or substitiution)
>through the radio programmes transmitted by the Akha radio station in
>Thailand and China. Battery powered transistor radios provide the only
>access to media for many of the Akha villages in the remote mountain
>areas.
>
>The International Conference on Hani and Akha Culture was hosted by the
>People?s Government of the Xishuangbanna Dai Prefecture, and the
>official focus lied in cultural and economic issues. The representatives
>of the Akha leadership  used the occasion as well to compare their
>conditions within the different national contexts.
>
>They considered the governmental policies that influence their daily
>lives; issues such as citizen rights, education and infrastructure, land
>rights, and especially the introduction of a unified script.
>
>The main narrative followes the highly recognized Akha personality, Abaw
>Buseu, on his way from his village in Thailand to the conference in
>Yunnan.
>
>The documentary film structure recognizes the emerging ?media loop?: TV,
>radio, and the internet. We established an internet link from the
>meeting in China to the radio station in Thailand, which allowed to
>transmit the live discussions to the villages in the mountains within
>the allotted 2 hour Akha programme. Abaw Buseu?s wife and villagers are
>filmed listening to the programme, which again, is integrated in the
>documentary.
>
>coming soon: http://www.hani-akha.org
>
>

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