Global Interchange: The Same but Different

Praxis is a productive basis for international interchange the diversity and pluralism of critical practice offers an implicit challenge to dominant models. The replication of versions of academic tunnel vision is too often a one-way transmission of discourse and power from the North to the South of the world. Practice-based collaborations can transform relations between places and people into reciprocal activity, encouraging an open dynamic where it is possible to extricate what is shared and similar from the different, the contradictory. Change becomes possible by bringing ideology into visibility, relativising and undermining hegemony. The metric league tables between universities and the competition between educational institutions in a global context efface flows of influence and ultimately contestations of power. That knowledge can only be built, not donated, became clear in specific training projects such as: MEDA Film Development, Marrakech, Morocco 2007-2009; Imagine FESPACO Newsreel, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso 2009, 2011; Beyond Borders, Djerba, Tunisia 2010.These workshops depended on collaborative exchanges between theory and practice and developed approaches which assumed that artistic and cultural aspects are central elements of the creative industries. They attempted to combine an integrated understanding of both the creative and business elements of an extended process. This holistic approach is crucial to a better exchange between film-makers and audiences from different countries.It is important that African, Asian and Latin American filmmakers, and indeed all independents the world over, do not remain permanently relegated to the margins of the art-house festival ghettos, trapped in the margins of the global film industry. Together we can explore and pioneer new ways to produce innovative stories in order to create and reach new audiences.