So I'm willing to bet that one of my proposed projects is something that's never been done in Peace Corps Cameroon before, maybe not even the entire organization. I little while ago I met a guy who is leading a group that organizes youth events that tend to focus on entertainment; things like singing competitions, art classes, and as I found out, movie-making. I've been looking for opportunities to work with youth (when they say youth here it generally means 14-30) so I decided to meet the guy at his office and discuss some ideas. As soon as I mentioned that I had attended film school and had been working in the industry for the past 4 years, he just about lost it. I actually had the idea a while ago, when Brian, my predecessor, told me he had been in a few local productions, but now it seemed like there was a legitimate way for me to start a film club. The idea is that I can serve as a sort of technical advisor to the group, helping them mostly with improving their filmmaking skills. I've already screened a couple of the films they've made and the are definitely suffering from the same problems all movies here seem to suffer from. Bad, inconsistent audio, lazy cinematography and confusing, underutilized editing. The acting and the stories are definitely in need of help too, but I'm hesitant to get involved in those aspects, as to me, the style of the acting and subject matter of the narrative are what make the filmmaking style unique to its origins. Most movies you'd see here are made in Nigeria. Nigeria is actually the third largest film market in the world behind Hollywood and Bollywood (hence it being dubbed Nollywood). Anyway, I'm confident saying that all of them are family dramas, usually dealing with forbidden love, the clash of tradition and modernism, and always with a healthy dose of witchcraft thrown in for good measure. It's frustrating because there are a wealth of interesting stories to tell here that don't involve a family arguing in a living room for 2 hours until the ghosts of the ancestors show up and kill everyone, but no one seems interested in telling them. Like most things in Cameroon, something is done one way and only that way, why ask questions? Anyway, I'm thinking I'll even be holding some informal classes on filmmaking basics like shot compostion, screenwriting and storyboarding, and editing.

So it seems I actually will be able to put my film degree to some use as an agroforestry volunteer. Another pet project that might do just that as well is something the Training Officer actually suggested to me. I say suggested, but really he volunteered me into the position of making a training video during stage. That idea quickly fell apart though since they really didn't have any idea of what they wanted. But I think it would really be great to have some sort of orientation video to put on the PC Cameroon website for invitees so that they would have a better idea what to expect, bring, etc. So I'm going to propose the idea next month when we have In-service Training and we'll see what happens. At the very least it'd give me a good excuse to travel some more and even visit the training of the next group of invites.