Q. How did you contact these women and how did you come up with this idea?
A. Hmmm! okay, the Sundance documentary film institute and the scold foundation they have a programme called stories of change. Okay, basically they make stories about social entrepreneurs and Bunker Roy from India was one of those social entrepreneurs. He founded the barefoot college in India.
Q. How did you contact these women? Did he (Bunker Roy) tell you about them?
A. Well, we were following him; he went to Kenya, Jordan, Palestine, Columbia, Guacamale, and baquina casa just for this one class. So we followed him in the recruitment process, he goes in person and he goes to very rural village off the electrical grid and he hand picks grandmothers, women that he finds will be very very strong, to come to this college. It was him who chose the women.
Jehane Noujaim
Q. So how did you get in touch with him/them?
A. Well we were following him, followed three women from three different continents, while he was recruiting them in their villages and then train in India for six months to be solar engineers and then come back to the villages. So he went to these countries and chose the women, we followed the women through the process.
Q. Why were there no schools in Jordan?
A. Oh there are schools, plenty of schools…
Q. Oh, there are?
A. Yeah, Absolutely
Q. So why are the kids not going to schools?
A. Okay, so this is a very very rural village, this is not typical; Jordan actually has an amazing educational system. The kids in that particular village, the girls get taken out of school between the age of 10 and 14 because they are hitting puberty, because they don’t want mixing with boys in the school, it’s considered shameful for them to go to school, that’s why.
Right…That’s a bit like Salma, we saw yesterday…
A. Yes, similar situation, they’re not locked up but it’s a similar situation in regards to girls.
Q. Why did you choose this project?
A. Okay. Erm my friend Joanne actually got the call to follow Bunker Roy; she’s my Co-Director on the film, she called me and told me ‘come on we’re going to India next week and we’re gonna film grandmothers and you’re gonna love it’. So initially I was between projects, I thought okay I’ll take a trip to India for three weeks, I’m gonna see what this film is about and then decide whether to continue and then I met Rafea, who is the main character in the film. I got instantly attached to her and it continued to grow and grow and grow.
Oh that’s good…
A.Yeah
Q. Did you have difficulties shooting in these rural areas?
A. I didn't have difficulties shooting in the rural areas
Q. Or with the villagers?
A. No I don’t think so because Rafea and I bonded very quickly and she trusted me very quickly, so I think that made her Mother and her sisters and everybody in the village very comfortable. Besides that, besides trust, when they first met me I was with a government official and there is a lot of illegal activity in that village, so they were a little afraid of the government, so to them I wasn’t only a film maker, part of me was representing the barefoot college in India, which I really didn’t have anything to do with it and part of me was representing the Jordanian government which I also have nothing to do with. But in their minds I’m a modern woman, a modern Arab woman coming in there and I have some sort of connection.
Q. You just connected with them…
A. Yeah, Yeah, I connected with them and I had connection to the government somehow and connection to the school somehow so it’s a bit of… yes absolutely 100% trust but maybe a bit of intimidation as well. That I had a connection to the government so maybe they better behave themselves or something like that, I’m talking about the men, the women were wonderful and trusted me right away.
Q. You know the husband of Rafia, was creating problems, did he create problems for you when shooting Rafea?
A. No I mean, I definitely have a way of bonding with people, he was actually much worse with her off camera, off camera he was much worse. I tried to understand him, we had conversations off camera to see why he was like that and I tried to interview him but would have none of it. I understood that he was like that for a reason because he didn’t have education opportunities, his Father died when he was very young, he doesn’t have a chance to work and holding on to that patriarchal voice of authority with Rafia was the only thing he had but you could tell he is a very weak man so I felt sorry for him and we bonded with humour. I mean there was one time he had a knife to my neck, but you know… I gave him that ‘yeah go ahead, dare you’ kind of look and he put it down very quickly. So I didn’t feel very threatened by it.
<Tashi Khan with the directorJehane Noujaim
Q. Did he actually become involved in the solar project?
A. He is in jail, you must have seen the short version, and yeah he’s in jail. In this film that we’re showing tonight he started smuggling drugs to be a man, to have money, to provide for his kids and not let Rafea. He is still in jail, he will probably be out if the sentencing goes according to plan, unless something terrible happens, he will probably be out before Ramadan, maybe in July.
Q. Right, so is he going to be involved in the project?
A. He will not be involved in the project, no. Let’s hope he doesn’t create more problems, the project is for women, for women only.
Q. So how do the men just sit around and do nothing, how do they support their families?
A. Some of them if they are lucky enough to have Jordanian citizenship they get government aid. Some of them make do and they go and pick vegetables, some of them are great entrepreneurs they go and buy sheep and sell them for a higher price at another village, it depends on their motivational level. They can work if they want to. A lot of them think they are too good to do menial labour. Yeah.
Q. Okay, what’s your next project?
A. My next project is actually community outreach with this film. To help Rafea actually start a training centre, garnishing the tremendous output and inspiration and willingness to help her and to help other women in Arab rural communities with this film and help empower them as well.
Oh, that’s great!
A. Insha’Allah, God Willing#
Jehane Noujaim and Mona Eldaief - Denmark/US/England-2012
English Arabic subtitles
Jehane Noujaim and Mona Eldaief - Denmark/US/England-2012
English Arabic subtitles
