Deni, Ali, Yeye and Ambi have come to watch film of the previous day’s dam fishing with Camera. We talk about how small Camera was when she was born. Deni is just a little bit tipsy, and a touch more affectionate than usual!
We had a filming camp just a hundred yards or so away from Deni’s village. The great bonus of digital cameras, as opposed to film in the old days, is that we could immediately share what we were doing with Ali, Deni, Camera and all the Baka.
Prior to the broadcasting of the film on Friday 17th February 2012, I was interview for two BBC radio programmes.
A Disappearing Paradise
Ali and his disabled daughter Yeye at the 'Elephant's Mirror'
A film within a film
The First Film Show
With no electricity, the Baka helped carry a small generator to the village to power the lights and projector.
Ambi (Camera's daughter) will soon be top of her class. Education is the key to her future.
Ambi goes to School
Radio Interviews & UK Parliment, Early Day Motion
The Baka have little exposure to films and television, but they completely took in their stride the projection of the original films on an 8-foot screen suspended in the middle of the village. It became an almost nightly spectacle and seemed to form an increasingly important role in focussing everyone on how much has been lost because of the depletion of their rainforest home and their increasing dependence on Arki.
Watching Rushes
Filmmaker Phil Agland takes us back to the rainforest to find out what has happened to Ali and his baby sister Camera, one generation later. Showing them the original film on a huge screen in the forest reminds them of how life use to be when they were children. It prompts a journey deep into the forest to find the fabled land of their ancestors, the ‘Elephant’s Mirror’.
“This is a sublime film - warm, human, beautiful to watch, filmed with intense love and achingly sad.”
- The Times
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90-Minute Program for BBC 2 (2012)