Students explore world issues via film

Soraya Umewaka '06 has always had an interest in street children. On summer visits to her mother's native country of Lebanon while growing up, she would compare the lives of the children there to her own.

"I would go down the street, and they would be selling beach balls. I'd be buying the beach balls," Umewaka said. "I always saw that I could be in their shoes."

While interning in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2003, she visited a street children's center and shot footage for her own use. At the time, she had no thought of putting it all together. Once she got back to campus, however, she realized that, with a little editing, her footage could become something more.

"I realized I could be creative about it," she said.

Lacking experience in this field, Umewaka sought help at the OIT New Media Lab in 87 Prospect. There, she learned how to use Final Cut Pro software, and her first documentary, "Afghanistan Unveiled," was born.

Her documentary filmmaking did not end there. In the summer of 2004, on a brief visit to a street children's center in Beirut, Lebanon, Umewaka unexpectedly shot an hour of footage that eventually became the seven-minute documentary "Lost Voices." In Arabic with English subtitles, the film contains the musings of young street children who speak openly about their past.

Umewaka then spent the past summer in Ecuador, Laos and Cambodia interviewing street children, their parents and even some government ministers about the lives of street children in these countries.

"I was so inspired by the level of maturity and resilience some of these children had," Umewaka said. "I was impressed by their expressions of dignity."

Umewaka, a politics major, will edit the thirteen hours of footage she obtained to use in her thesis, a comparative look at how the nature of government affects street children in these three countries.

Another Princeton filmmaker, economics major Sashank Rishyasringa '06, had an interest in filmmaking but never any time to pursue it. The summer after his sophomore year, he applied for a Martin Dale Fellowship, which allows students to pursue a creative project over the summer unrelated to their other academic work.

Rishyasringa used his fellowship to visit Ladakh, the last surviving Buddhist kingdom located in the Kashmir region between India and China.

There, he investigated Tibetan Buddhist art, a 2,000-year-old tradition still very much in practice today. Traveling to six different monasteries, he interviewed monks about their way of life and their religion, an area in which he did not have any prior background.

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Rishyasringa obtained about 13 hours of footage, which he converted into a documentary, called "A Thousand Arms for the World."

Rishyasringa found many challenges on his quest. The air in Ladakh is six times thinner than air at sea level, and Rishyasringa had to train beforehand for his body to acclimatize. Shooting in remote regions also created problems for electrical equipment that needed recharging.

"There is only electricity for four hours a day," Rishyasringa said. "I had to learn to conserve my equipment."

Both Umewaka and Rishyasringa faced the challenge of building trust with people they met so that they would act and speak freely. Umewaka said she used the camera as a catalyst for discussion.

"You have to be flexible and open-minded, especially when the footage and final result don't go the way you expect," Umewaka said.

The final product, of course, depends greatly on how hours of footage are whittled down into a coherent message by the editing process.

"Editing in the studio is like writing a paper. You have your thesis and arguments, but with images, actions and people rather than words," Rishyasringa said.

Umewaka said she believes her previous experience as a professional Noh actress, a Japanese form of theater, helped her make decisions about lighting and timing. She also took a film class with University professor Su Friedrich that gave her more experience in analyzing certain aspects of film.

Both have found success in documentary filmmaking. Umewaka's first documentary was aired on TigerTV, and she hopes to soon air her second one as a form of fundraising. Her thesis will be shown at the Princeton UNICEF banquet at the end of the year to raise funds for children. Rishyasringa's documentary was screened at the International Center, Butler College and at a reception in East Pyne.

Rishyasringa found the experience invaluable, and plans to make another documentary about the political ties of Indians outside of India to their homeland.

He does not, however, plan to pursue filmmaking as a career.

Umewaka hopes to shoot another documentary in Brazil next year, and she ultimately wishes to continue to help street children, either through documentary filmmaking or by running a center herself.

The biggest lesson both Umewaka and Rishyasringa said they took away from their experiences is the value of one's own ingenuity.

"You put yourself out there to understand the complexity of realities. That's a good characteristic of a filmmaker," Umewaka said. "You would be surprised at how much you can accomplish by taking initiative."