Global Interchange: The Same, but Different

Reflecting on international film and media training in the current epoch, we inevitably navigate within the framework imposed by a global monoculture. Even the terms and categories of this discussion—“film” and “media,” “training” and “education”—carry complex distinctions and connections that are ultimately caught up in the multiform contention of power relations between different parts of the world. Over the last ten years, I have been involved in several small-scale initiatives bringing new filmmakers from the south together for short series of workshops to develop and strengthen their projects. Inevitably they begin by negotiating existent str uctures and domina nt ideas of f i lm production both w ithin their cultures and outside of them. Both filmmakers and their eventual audiences are unavoidably influenced by the modes of representation that are part of a cultural industry that has spread across the world, but was manufactured elsewhere. Part of the process of training is to define and strengthen the direct speech of indigenous voices in film and other media that may take or leave elements of an imposed monoculture.