The French Embassy has partnered with the Girls Voices Initiative (GVI) to enable women in the film industry to build experience and technical competence.
The program dubbed ‘Girl Nation Project’, is funded by the French Embassy and is scheduled to be held in Abuja and Kano states.
According to the organizers, it will not only improve the women’s filmmaking skills but will also ensure that at the end of the engagement, they produce a short film that will be screened around the world.
Founder of Girls Voices Initiative/Girl Nation Project, Carolyn Seaman, said: “Our Girl Nation program has been designed to target female filmmakers, first to build skills and strengthen skills in some cases, and also to build the community of female filmmakers from stronger collaborations, cooperations; hopefully, with more significant impact – not only in Nigeria but around the world.
“We feel like our women in the film industry have been disadvantaged for far too long; we have been relegated to keep struggling to only thrive as actresses, or at best as makeup artists or the caterers cooking food on set, or more recently as Production Managers.
“But for us, we believe that women can begin to take those technical aspects of filmmaking – handling the camera, recording the sound, lighting the set, or even creating the design for the set of various film productions.”
Also, the Head of Cooperation and Cultural Affairs at the French Embassy, Rafael Pont, said “The promotion of girls and women’s rights is one of the priorities of the French Government.
“Here in Nigeria, we are very proud to support Civil Society Organisations which are promoting those rights through training programs and is specific to Girls Voices Initiative.
“We know it is very challenging for women to work in the filmmaking sector. So we have to push forward to give them all the skills to be able to shoot films and be able to promote their products.”
