A Project by Mail & Guardian Television, South Africa
In 1996 Mail & Guardian television produced a series of four films shot entirely by township residents – ordinary people who had never used a video camera before, but who were trained and given a camera for a period of one week, in order to document their own stories and their own lives. Presented in the form of visual diaries by eight different people living their lives in the township environment, the films give a voice on television to people who have never seen themselves on television, or ever dreamed that they would have direct access to the medium before.
Following the success of the first series of Ghetto Diaries, Mail & Guardian television is producing a second 6 part series in 1997. Called Ghetto Diaries – Across the Divide - the series uses the camera to bring together people who are normally divided or separated. Each programme brings together two people to make their own films. They are linked in some way – a migrant worker and his wife at home, a black and white teenager in a small town. They were trained and given a camera for two weeks. They use it to cross a divide of time and space and difference…