Pacific Connections

Community film-making & gender inequality in the Pacific

The prevalence of violence against women in the Pacific region is among the highest in the world. Countries across the region have identified the social, well-being and economic consequences of gender-based violence and women’s economic and political marginalization. Pacific Connections takes up the development challenge of understanding how development policy and practice in the area of gender inequality can be more closely aligned with Pacific vernacular understandings and processes of social change at a community level and in a context of collective rather than individual rights.

With Pacific film-makers’ recent development of culturally effective participatory methods to tap into vernacular ideas and concerns, and anthropological evidence that Pacific gender differentiates relational roles not biological difference, this project capitalizes on previous research-policy work which has established an international research consortium and network of film-makers and development practitioners working across the spectrum of gender inequality. In 2019, project activity focused on: creating an online resource and repository for film-makers; on producing short films from our existing rushes; on a regional workshop in Fiji to gather together – for the first time – film-makers from six Pacific ODA DAC-listed countries.

The project has actively engaged with:

• Fiji: Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, UK FCO British High Commission, European Union Delegation, UN Women, Pacific Women
• Papua New Guinea: Voices from the Wilderness
• Samoa: Tiapapata Art Centre
• Solomon Islands: Sparklens Freelance
• Tonga: Women and Children’s Crisis Centre
• Vanuatu: Wan Smol Bag Theatre, Further Arts

See Pacific Connections on Facebook.