Participatory Video as a Creative Artistic Tool

Jacqueline Gómez (Medellín, Colombia) is the cofounder and director of projects at El Movimiento, which promotes the use of sign language and improved access to film. She has carried out educational programmes for appreciating and making films, narrative and audiovisual contents for the deaf and the blind and has advised the Colombian Ministry of Culture on its Colombia de Película. Mi cine accesible programme. She was also in charge of the Inclucine project, which offers lessons on key filmmaking concepts in sign language, with dubbing and audio description.

Jacqueline Gómez is also presenting a selection of shorts as part of the Hall Participatory Filmmaking section.

Marcela Londoño (Medellín, Colombia) is a specialist in cultural projects with a social impact. In 2009 she set up Mi Comuna to raise awareness of the territory, promote processes of collective memory and social transformation and boost identity and recognition through the firsthand stories of the people involved. She has also set up a number of training and educational activities linked to community communication, as well as journalism and audiovisual initiatives. Through Mi Comuna she organises En-Cuadra Community Film Festival, which brings together methodologies that put spectators first and foremost.

Pilar Arcila (Marseille, France) is a photographer, filmmaker and film editor and programmer. Since 2002 she has run photography and film art workshops for adults and children. A number of her films have been screened at l’Alternativa over the years. Since 2015 she has organised group creative projects with the inmates at a psychiatric hospital in Marseille. She is currently working on her second feature-length documentary, with gypsy families living on the outskirts of Marseille.

Pilar Arcila will also be presenting a selection of short films from her group creative projects as part of Hall Participatory Filmmaking.

Tessa Boeykens (Brussels, Belgium) works in the field of ethnography and participatory video exploring the production and mobilisation of historical narratives in “post-conflict” Guatemala. She focuses on the relationship between narrative and political action in indigenous communities. As part of her PhD she developed a participatory methodology which led to a performative ethnography of a community video process. In 2018 she set up the Participatory Video Festival.