Pacific Connections: Community filmmaking and gender inequality in the Pacific

Pacific Connections takes up the challenge of understanding how development policy and practice in the area of gender inequality can be more closely aligned with Pacific vernacular understandings and processes of social change at a community level and in a context of collective rather than individual rights. Why is the current paradigm underpinning gender policy apparently ineffective in grasping the social actions that produce gender inequality in the Pacific?

With Pacific film-makers’ recent development of culturally effective participatory methods to tap into vernacular ideas and concerns, and anthropological evidence that Pacific gender differentiates relational roles not biological difference, this interdisciplinary project involves an international research consortium with Pacific partners in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Samoa and a network of filmmakers and development practitioners working across the spectrum of gender inequality.

The current phase of research is funded by the Scottish Funding Council under the Global Challenges Research Fund and will:

• create an online resource and repository for Pacific filmmakers
• produce short films from existing rushes
• hold the first-ever regional workshop in Fiji for Pacific filmmakers.

This current phase builds on research funded by EuropeAid (2014-2015) which resulted in an influential research-policy report, and on research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council GCRF project (2017-2019).