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Stalin K. & Jessica Mayberry

The line between “courage” and “stupidity”

Stalin K. & Jessica Mayberry - India

The line between “courage” and “stupidity”

Stalin K. & Jessica Mayberry - India

Topics

  • NGO
  • Participatory Video
  • Access
  • Advice

About the author

Stalin K. is a documentary filmmaker, media trainer and human rights activist from Gujarat, India. Stalin has directed 15 documentaries and has won several international awards for his films. He has produced six community radio programs, designed more than 20 rights-based campaigns and conducted over 300 trainings in film making and participatory video, street theatre, radio production, and development communications. As an activist, he has been deeply involved in the relief efforts of the 2002 Gujarat riots, and of the Kutch earthquake of 2001, during which time he helped to create a community radio program that was instrumental in delivering information to the victims. Stalin was the Convener of the Community Radio Forum-India until 2009 and was one of the core group that drafted the legislation that made community radio legal in India. His film work on the issue of untouchability has helped bring international attention to Dalit issues, most notably his 1996 film Lesser Humans on manual scavenging, and his feature-length 2007 film IndiaUntouched, winner of the Mumbai International Film Festival. This film surveys the existence of untouchability across 8 states, four religions and all social classes in India. He teaches communications, film and grassroots activism at a number of the most senior institutes in India and has lectured at Berkeley, Stanford and NYU, among other institutions, and also advises foundations and NGOs on their communications and participatory media strategies. One of his greatest passions is training rural men and women in leadership and in expressing themselves powerfully, and he spends as much time as possible in the field, working directly with communities. Until 2008 he ran Drishti Media in Ahmedabad, an organization he co-founded at the age of 23. Jessica Mayberry founded Video Volunteers after spending a year training rural Indian women in filmmaking as a W.J. Clinton Fellow of the American India Foundation. Jessica is a TED Fellow and a Fellow of Echoing Green, an organization that invests in social entrepreneurs with high-impact solutions. In 2009 she was recognized as an Architect of the Future by the Waldzell Institute of Austria, and in 2010, as an Outstanding Young Person by the Junior Chamber International Osaka. In 2011, she was one of the top fifty people shortlisted for the Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize, out of over 1000 applicants from 66 countries. Under her leadership VV has won numerous awards, including the Knight News Challenge, the most competitive award for innovations in news and information, the NYU-Stern Business School Business Plan competition, a Tech Award, a Development Gateway Awards shortlist, and a shortlist for the King Baudouin (of Belgium) Foundation International Development Prize. Prior to starting Video Volunteers, Jessica worked in television in New York at Court TV, the Fox News Channel, and CNN. She has served on the board of Free the Children, the world’s largest organization of “Children Helping Children” and on the Advisory Council of Counterpart International. She holds a degree in Modern History and Modern Languages from Oxford University, from which she graduated in 1999.

About the clip

Interviewer: Sergei Trofimov

Camera: Anke Riester

Editing: Milena Holzknech

Edition: 2013

Location: Nalles, Italy

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