Women and community-based video: Communicating in the age of AIDS

abstract

This article focuses on work¹ with a group of female community health care workers and parents (including one male) in a rural community, aimed at addressing issues around HIV/AIDS through community-based video. Drawing on feminist visual culture and using a participatory methodology, such as video documentary, creates a space for dynamic interaction on topics that have often been kept silent in rural Southern African communities ravaged by HIV/AIDS and where communication at various levels as well as between generations, has been difficult. In particular, this work is significant in contexts characterised by unequal gender relations, where women and girls are, on the one hand, bearing the brunt of the impact of the pandemic but, on the other, are often silenced in discussions around topics that are regarded as taboo. The focus of this participatory video work is on the process, engagement, dialogue and ultimately the possibility of making multiple voices heard and activating social agency.

keywords:

• community-based video
• participatory research
• gender
• poverty
• HIV/AIDS