I’m at TEDxSeattle. These are my notes on Scott Macklin’s panel “Convening Community through Stories.”
Scott has been working in South Africa since 2000. Ubuntu is a South African word meaning “we are, therefore I am.” What does it mean to start with the we? That’s what we’re going to go over in this talk.
Scott uses the term “deep hanging out” to describe the way he makes films with South Africans rather than about South Africans.
The first film Scott showed was Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He says “we are not different in order to be separate, we are different in order to work together.”
Scott made another film about rowing in the pacific northwest. He found that the elders paddled faster than the younger people because they paddled with grace. The elders say that rowing is traveling the pathway of the ancestors. They row to teach the young people to move toward a common goal, to have self esteem and self honor.
Scott made another film about basketball players in Port Elizabeth who worked with Eddie Vedder on basketball and music. The sale of the album went toward scholarships for the basketball players to go to school.
Now he’s playing videos of lots of local hip-hop artists spewing platitudes.
Sarah’s Commentary
This talk is very tweetable, lots of short meaningful quotes, but if there’s a greater thesis or point that he’s trying to make, I’m not getting it. I don’t think anyone in the audience would disagree that communities or stories are good things. He’s not telling us anything we don’t know. I would have appreciated more information about how he made these videos and what advice he has for potential filmmakers.
