[Montréal, Québec, Canada 14°C] I’m just starting to review the hours of footage I took while visiting Southern Sudan last March/April 2009. Editing is now underway. It’s refreshing for me to work with the images and, in a way, revisit the East African region again and reaquaint myself with the people I met there. I can’t wait to go back.
I’m starting a few video series from the footage from Southern Sudan. You may have already viewed the first in the portrait series: Video Portrait #1. Well below is the first in another series of one-minute shorts that mix footage I recorded in Southern Sudan with archival audio from the Prelinger Archive. Rick Prelinger, the founder of the archive was in Montréal recently during the 38th edition of Montréal’s Festival du nouveau cinéma (FNC).
I plan on posting as much of the video footage from the Southern Sudan trip with the new understanding that it will provide an important archive of the region during its post-war six-year interim period. A slice of it anyway. There is not much footage from the South and even less that contains opinions, hopes, concerns of the people who actually live there. I was lucky to have access to many people. I managed to interview dozens of people. Some spoke English while others shared their perspectives in their local dialect as expressed to me through an interpreter.
The video below, is my first within the Burning Billboard/Prelinger Archive series. The series will juxtapose ideas of a postwar consumer society with the simplicity of postwar footage from Southern Sudan.
