Workshop 4 - Accessible Advocacy: Tackling Sexual Harassment in Egypt through Mobile Phones

When the inaugural Cairo Festival for Mobile Film took place in 2007, its significance lay in the reality that filming in the public space was not considered socially acceptable in Egypt, at best. Yet the success of this event, as well as that of mobile phone video workshops and festivals of its kind, which have since taken place internationally, testify to the medium’s growing potential and importance in today’s social climate. Previous to January 25th, individuals would use the camera feature on their mobile phones with utmost discretion, not only due to social confinement, but out of the justified fear of random and unproportionally harsh crackdowns by government and police on those who would be singled out as having made such recordings in public. There has been a drastic change in this regard, as countless ordinary people have since used and continue to utilise their mobile phones as a means of documenting events ranging from peaceful marches to police brutality in the streets. Mobile phones are able to bring the proof and magnitude of these events to wider audiences due to the accessibility of both the medium itself and the footage it can capture. These devices are now seen as vital tools used to focus in on and expose social issues by making the captured videos available to a public unprecedented in scale.
Workshop 4 – ‘Accessible Advocacy’ will utilise this environment, which has become sensitized to the use and importance of mobile phones, to address and tackle the widely documented presence of sexual harassment in Egypt. During this workshop, the participants will discuss how harassment plagues current day Egypt and the ways in which this can be questioned and highlighted in brief videos. The workshop offers an opportunity for serious debates across gender boundaries and for both to have a better understanding of how individuals experience and interpret sexual harassment. The videos shot within this framework will be recorded and edited on the mobile phones of the participants. Technical instruction on editing techniques and other aspects of filming with a simple device will be offered throughout the course.
Once the videos have been produced, they will be screened at Townhouse and distributed freely to NGOs, schools and members of the public interested in raising awareness and encouraging debate.