Meet the Anton Fellows:
An American in Ghana
Interview with Jay Shapiro
Courtesy of an Anton Fellowship, screen studies major Jay Shapiro '04 traveled to what some might consider an unlikely place to experiment with videography: the country of Ghana in West Africa. While there, he gave a video camera to a young Ghanaian boy. The two of them set out to film the country around them and, in the process, forged a relationship.
What prompted you to develop your project and apply for an Anton Fellowship to fund it?
I had traveled to Ghana in the 11th grade through a program called the Experiment in International Living. The trip involved a home-stay with a local family, and community service. It was really cool. I loved the country and wanted to go back.
Also, I have a strong interest in video, and for some time I'd had an idea that would involve giving a video camera to a child, and seeing what he or she did with it. With the help and encouragement of professors Tim Shary, Marcia Butzel and Sharon Krefetz, I was able to develop this idea into an Anton Fellowship proposal, to be carried out in Ghana. I was lucky enough to be selected to have my proposal funded, and I'm very grateful. The Anton Fellowship program is a really great opportunity at Clark.
Can you describe your project in more detail? What were you hoping to accomplish during your trip?
The project involved creating a documentary video that would be filmed with two video cameras, one operated by me, and one by a child. The video would be different from most documentaries in that there would be no voice-over and it would not focus on any particular issue. I wanted the resulting product to serve as a discussion piece, to be viewed with a panel present to promote discussion.
I wanted the video to be a portrait of that child, and to document what he or she did with this new form of expression. Ghana was important as a location because I had some familiarity with the country, and its level of media maturity. Very few people have a television, and there are only a few television stations. I was pretty confident that most children had never seen a video camera before, and had been exposed to very little media in general. Also, Ghana is very interesting for a number of reasons, notably its legacy of colonialism and the slave trade. While that wasn't the focus of what I did, I think this part of Ghana's history will come out through the eyes of the child and his camera, and through my camera as well.
My plan was to let the child video whatever he wanted to. I would follow with my camera and film him, but I would also go out on my own and record my own footage. I also wanted to do some interviews, some of which would be conducted by the child.
How did you decide where to locate in Ghana?
I discovered a program called the Global Volunteers Network , an amazing organization run out of New Zealand. They have some projects set up in a few countries, including Ghana. I explained to them what I wanted to do and they found a volunteer teaching position for me in a rural village for one month. I taught eighteen students from ages ten to thirteen, and as a volunteer I was provided with meals and a place to stay in the village. Global Volunteers had told the villagers about my project, to make sure it would be all right with them. In some cultures there are taboos around cameras.
How did you decide which child would be your videographer?
Obviously, that was a big decision, and I wanted to make it early so I'd have plenty of time to work on my project. I decided to choose one of my students since I'd be having regular contact with them. By about the third day I had a sense of who the brightest children were and their backgrounds. I chose an incredible child named Robert*. He's incredibly bright-very, very smart. His father and mother are divorced, which is kind of a rare thing in Ghana, and he's being raised by his mother and step-grandmother. He'd never been outside of his village. All the children were great, but Robert really stood out.
I filmed Robert being presented with the camera. He had free reign to record whatever he wanted in the village. The village itself was pretty small, about 2,000 people. I also took him to the slave castles and some other places around the village. He was terrific and he loved using the camera.
Had he ever seen or used a still camera?
He'd seen still cameras before, but never a video camera, and he'd had some limited exposure to television. Sometimes a movie will be shown in his village on Saturdays. I went a couple times with him to see old, B-grade movies shown on a small television and VCR in someone's house. Those are the kinds of things he had seen. I don't know how much of that influenced his footage and what he decided to do with the camera. He definitely went through a process though. You can see that by comparing his early and later footage. He really enjoyed it and became something of a superstar around the village, although he handled it well. As far as the other children were concerned, there was a little jealousy at first, but for the most part they were just happy to have the camera around and an American there.
Do the villagers have any concept of or access to the internet?
Not really. About 60 kms away is a small coastal city that has some internet cafes. A couple teachers have viewed it.
What about language? How did you handle that?
English is the national language of Ghana and most Ghanaians know some British English. However, in the village where I stayed, English wasn't very popular, so I did learn some Twi, the native language. In Robert's footage, everyone would speak Twi to him, but in my footage, you hear a lot of English. Any dialog will be subtitled in the final product, because even the English can be difficult to understand.
What was the economic base for the village?
Mostly subsistence farming. There's a palm oil factory nearby that I tried to work into the documentary, but they didn't let me take the camera inside. Palm oil is an important product there. You're either a farmer or you go work at the factory. They don't pay much, but Robert's birth father works there. It's a pretty poor village.
What's the chance of Robert being able to go further with school?
Probably not very good. It's frustrating when you meet a child like Robert who's incredibly smart. He's very poor. The country is trying to develop some initiatives with education. After the age of sixteen, it costs a lot to get more education. It's common in Ghana for students not to go to university until they're in their late twenties, because it can take that long to save up money.
And a lot of people are trying to leave Ghana. There's actually a large Ghanaian population here in Worcester. When I screen my documentary at the beginning of the next semester, I want to invite them to see it. I'd like their feedback.
Did Robert, and the people of the village, understand why you were doing this project?
I thought about the problem of explaining to Robert who would be seeing the final video. Should I try to explain? Would he be able to understand? In the end I didn't really go into that. I just gave him the camera, showed him how it worked, and let him explore whatever he wanted with it. I think by the end he had concluded that at least my parents were going to see it. When we were in the slave castles, he filmed textual material, so, as he explained, my parents could read it. I never told him that it was an academic project or something that might be seen by a wider audience. I told the people in the village that I'd mail them a tape of the final video.
Is there any particular challenge you'll face in creating the final video?
My biggest dilemma is how to make the video be about Robert, and not the slave trade. Before I went to Ghana, a number of professors asked if I was going to film the slave castles. When you talk with Americans about West Africa, its history of slavery is what people think of. I ended up taking Robert to the slave castles three times to get footage there. He took some very poignant photography, and we had some really interesting discussions.
But the project is really about Robert, not the slave trade, and my relationship with him and how it grew over the month. I want to make it clear that I'm a white, semi-privileged American college student who's creating this project, while he's a poor, ten-year old African boy, and, as such, we have very different futures in the world. Our relationship together, especially in the slave castles, is a really interesting dynamic. But how do I put it together so that the audience knows it's not about the slave castles, but about Robert in the slave castles?
Also, just trying to capture Robert will be a challenge. No one is going to believe that I didn't coach him to say what he says. He's an incredibly open, poetic child who says some really profound things. I want to give the audience a glimpse of this incredible person.
And I don't want it to play like a Save the Children video. Sure, the people there are poor, but they're not starving. While there are huge problems in Ghana, it's not meant to be a sympathy video. It's just meant to be an exploration of Robert and his life. Part of that involved placing him in visually symbolic places, like the slave castles.
Did the villagers have much awareness of the slave trade?
No. Although I was teaching mostly English, math and some geography (which they didn't know much about either), I tried to teach a little bit about the slave trade. These were young children so I didn't want to get too graphic. I did some reading about the slave trade when I was there and took the whole class to one of the museums in Cape Coast. Interestingly, a couple of the local teachers sat in on my class so they could learn about the slave trade. There's very little awareness of their history, and it's difficult for them to get past the fact that a lot of the slave trade was inter-tribal. There's a level of shame about it, so everyone brushes it under the table. But when you see these enormous castles, there's no way to escape it.
How are you continuing this project?
About the only thing I'm doing this semester is editing this documentary! I have about fifteen hours of footage to work with. With the help of Professors Shary and Butzel, I'm incorporating this project into my senior honor's thesis. I want to preview the video here on campus. I also sent some information about it to our local PBS station, and they indicated an interest in seeing it. I want to show it as much as I can, preferably, like I said earlier, as part of a panel discussion led by some professors and perhaps some Ghanaians from the community. It's meant to raise more questions than answer them.
It sounds like getting the Anton Fellowship has been a big boost for your work in screen studies.
This project wouldn't have happened without it. The grant was very generous and covered everything-my airfare, volunteer's fee, and production costs. It was a huge boost. And this video is something I'll be able to take with me after college. I hope it can have a life even after I've left Clark.
* Not his real name.
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Additional Resources
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Robert with his camera
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