Sentro media Covalima

PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS 2009

Click on one of the thumbnails to enlarge the photographs. A selection of photographs taken by Suai youth during a photography workshop facilitated by Richard Jones a Melbourne Documentary-maker and photographer and funded by the Friends of Suai. The photographs were exhibited in the St Kilda Town Hall Gallery in May 2010 as part of the Connections Across the Timor Sea Exhibition. More to come about this later …

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I’m back at my desk in my warm room in freezing Melbourne after a month in Suai that was warm in every way.

I worked with Annie Sloman ex Bibi Bulak, more recently of Jogjakarta, who is fluent in Tetun and very good now with Indonesian too who knows how to engage Timorese young people through her 5 years experience working there.

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We held workshops in writing stories for sms and basic digital photography, converting them for the web and uploading through the terribly slow Timor Telecom in Suai. Hey – why am I complaining – at least they are there!

But the news about the internet in Suai is postively wonderful – following our previous stories – the latest word from Emanuel is that Broadband will be at the Youth Centre and the Friends of Suai Community Centre by October this year ! Too late for me to give them workshops this year – but c’est la vie for the people of Suai it’s brilliant.

I’ve just finished uploading the photographs to the stories our workshop groups wrote so you can see them below in news and in various other categories. I’ve finished uploading the animated movies they made using stills, music and imovie.

I’m leaving on 3rd June for Suai to work with YoMaTre. We will be discussing this website and where and how we are going on from here. We will be arranging a launch date too.

Apart form the normal planning and discussion I will be working with Annie Sloman, ex Bibi Bulak and community arts worker and YoMaTre. We will be workshopping story telling skills by critically examining our video footage and our photographs and figuring out what stories they tell about us. We will be working together to produce some work for the launch of Suai Media Space. In mid to late June we will be working together on broadband from Dili, so keep checking in to find out more.

Emanuel Braz- one of the movers and shakers behind the Uma Media House Project is in Melbourne at present so we met up and he’s confident YoMaTre will have an Internet connection within the next couple of months! YayH! He will be coming done to Suai in June to meet with the Suai mob and we will be connecting with him in Dili.

That’s Emanuel that Marsha’s leaning on, on the right at METAC 2 years ago.

Emanuel has expressed interest in blogging the Uma Media House story and he’s going to introduce me to Abe Barreto well known Timorese blogger and story-teller from Suai – so stay posted for that too.

Jen