Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of South Wales (joint submission with Cardiff Metropolitan University and University of Wales Trinity Saint David)
“Cameroonian Women in Motion”
At Shoe Shop Festival, Braamfontein, South Africa
Research Context
“Cameroonian Women in Motion” is a mosaic portrait of women engaging in a variety of activities and events. It uses the documentary mode to visualise factual representations of women’s images in different social, economic and cultural contexts. This documentary is part of a body of research-as-practice, mainstreaming African women’s images and lived experiences by documenting their stories and experiences, thus increasing their visibility. It attempts to embed in digital form some social realities of women’s experiences in Cameroon.
Research Imperatives
The film is part of a larger project, the objective of which is to present expanded cultural representations of African women by offering images that define them as agents of their actions. A specific aim is to document women’s lives outside of defined spaces of the ‘home’. The research uses documentary film as a mode of examining the African woman in contemporary life - outside of the home, pre-occupied with things other than children, away from her husband, and thus evoking other dimensions of women’s lived experiences and realities in her community and society at large.
Project methods
“Cameroonian Women in Motion” is non-verbal formal experimentation. It uses relational montage as a strategy to frame, express and mediate women’s disparate activities that evoke and reflect a sense of unison of motion and movement to investigate whether there is a direct connection between women’s dynamic social networking activities with regards to their changing status, social transformation and progress. As women walk and parade with pride on Women’s Day, they validate their social positions, share experiences and celebrate their achievements. Their dynamic activities are part of a universal vision of women’s movement shared across the globe.
Dissemination
Shoe Shop Festival, Braamfontein, South Africa
Images of Black Women Festival, London, 2013
International Images Film Festival for Women, Harare, Zimbabwe, 2013
