INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE PROGRAMMES

The North South Exchange programme at Wits

Little by little, one travels far.

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892 - 1973)

Since pioneering participant Victoria Ascarsson arrived in Africa in July 2005, students from Wits, ARCADA and AFDA have participated in an annual exchange programme between South Africa and Finland.

Travelling to local and distant shores is surely one of the best ways to broaden the mind and enhance one?s life journey. At Wits several exchange programmes enable students to do just that.

The North South Programme has been designed to allow students to not only study film and television in unfamiliar circumstances, but also produce documentary films in different cultures. Students interrogate the way in which culture is reflected through the eyes of outsiders and learn how to engage with the 'other' without assumptions and prejudges stemming from different points of view.

For the 2008 programme four students from Finland and six South Africans, three Witsies and three students from AFDA met for the very first time at Wits on the 4^th of February to embark on a programme of nine weeks of intensive training, filmmaking and socialising.

This year's course focused on 'Roots', with lectures, workshops and excursions planned to address issues of heritage and culture around the origins of humankind, personal relationships and social relations within families and cultures.

Taku Kaskela and Lieza Louw acted as coordinators for the Wits portion of the project. South African films such as Main Reef Road, Born into Struggle, My Land my Dignity and others were screened. Students also attended the MA Technical Core Course and Professor Jyoti Mistry's Subjective Documentary Fourth Year Course. Excursions included visits to the Apartheid Museum, Fordsburg and the Cradle of Humankind.

The students produced two short documentary films; Poison of Choice a look at how dressing fashionably becomes a bind for the only breadwinner in a family and (Mis) epresentation of Afrikaner Identity a narrative that interrogates the Bok van Blerk music video De la Rey.

During early May, Jani Nals and Taneli Harot from Arcada assisted the visitors to settle quickly and seamlessly into (student) life in Helsinki. During their stay in Finland the students also produced two documentary films, Our House a short film on a seventeen year old learner who leaves her family home to join a squatter community and Mummy drives a Cadillac based on a family who has a large number of both children and old American Cars.

The students view their experiences as 'life changing' . Their skills have improved greatly, they made many new friends and their views of living and working in different cultures have changed forever.