Virginia

︎︎︎Nanyuki, Kenya
︎︎︎July 2019 

Project for the Princeton Filmmaking Progam. 

I traveled to Kenya to take part in a conservation documentary filmmaking program. We worked in groups of four, with both American and Kenyan students for 6 weeks.

The challenge I've been fascinated with for a while is how we can transform the communication of climate change and conservation research. People don't respond to facts and figures; they relate to other people's experiences. Through the sharing of stories, I believes we can make scientific research more accessible to wider audiences.

In this project, my team sought to communicate the challenges involved in the transition between subsistence farming and cash crop farming in the Kenyan economy. Before deciding on a film topic, we met with almost every scientist at Mpala Research Centre, the nature conservancy we lived in. We asked them what were the greatest challenges facing the people surrounding the conservancy. The scientists told us the intimate stories of the people behind their research; somehow, in the development of their research these stories were lost behind facts and figures. It was clear the scientists were moved by these stories-- they were the motivators behind their work. But this personal importance was lost in their research, and this is what my team tried to reclaim in the story of Virginia.