Looking to Harness the Power of the Lens

Their names are Edris, Elaha and Elham, and until a few days ago they had never set foot in America, much less attended America’s premier celebration of independent filmmaking--the Sundance Film Festival.

Stepping along the ice-covered sidewalks in this town crammed with filmmakers, Hollywood executives, agents and the world’s press, they pass unnoticed through the crowds. Yet 23-year-old Edris Nawin, 19-year-old Elaha Shaheen and her 20-year-old brother, Elham, have come to Sundance with one of the most compelling stories of the festival.

They have just made a journey from halfway around the globe from their home in Peshawar, Pakistan, with hours of film footage of what life is like in the teeming and squalid Afghan refugee camps that line the border between Pakistan and their native country, Afghanistan. It is here that more than 2 million exiles from Afghanistan have fled after years of war that has led to 90% of Afghanistan falling under the control of the the fundamentalist Islamic Taliban movement. There is anxiety and worry in the eyes of these three young people, for they have been anxiously waiting to hear if one of their comrades is alive.

The three Afghan youths were brought to Sundance with the help of Kathryn Lenehan, who runs an organization called Studio Without Walls in Los Angeles, which produces films about peace process around the world.

Earlier this month, anonymous American donors gave a digital movie camera to a 21-year-old Afghan friend of the three youths and sent him across the border into Afghanistan on a secret and dangerous mission--to film what life is like in a country whose leaders forbid anyone to take pictures of any living creature, whether human or animal. If their comrade is caught filming, he faces certain arrest and, if any of the footage includes Afghan women, then possibly death, they said, at the hands of a regime that is governed by strict Islamic law.

Edris, Elaha and Elham have come to Sundance with hopes of learning techniques of modern filmmaking and, specifically, how to make documentaries so they can send more young people into Afghanistan on similar missions to film what is going on in their homeland.

“We want to take this opportunity and use these films to tell the story of our people to the people of the world by making a documentary,” Edris said. “Our people are taking a great risk doing this job because the government of Afghanistan has made a law that if anyone is caught with a camera filming people, they will be jailed. . . . If you want to make a film about how the women of Afghanistan live, you will be dead.”

Under the Taliban, the female population has been denied education, and women are not allowed to work outside the home. And if a woman ventures outdoors, she must cover herself from head to toe with a flowing garment called a burka and always be accompanied by her husband or a close male relative.

There is no television, music or cinema allowed under the Taliban. Adulterers are stoned. Women who show even a naked ankle can be flogged. Public executions are carried out in the stadium after soccer matches.

“That guy who is in Afghanistan now, he has gone to take very, very interesting stuff because we found out that some of the extremist Muslim groups are going to the schools and are distributing literature to the children which is very dark and very dangerous for their future,” Edris explained in an interview. “So this man wanted to go and interview some of these kids and plus get some live pictures from the situation.”

Edris said the area is along the Pakistan border. “That is the place where the super leader of the Taliban lives,” Edris said, noting that the leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, has never been seen in public and there are no known photographs of him. Edris said that the man with the camera is being aided by relatives living inside Afghanistan, but if he is caught, the “easiest thing” that could happen would be that he would be jailed.

“As I said, we have 80 people inside [Afghanistan],” he explained. “We have people going and coming for business. They are buying stuff in Peshawar and going to Afghanistan and selling it. We communicate through these people.”

Afghanistan, of course, has been much in the news in recent years because that is where extremist Osama bin Laden, the alleged terrorist, has been hiding. But Edris and his friends said there are many other terrorists in Afghanistan that the American public never hears about, yet who are just as powerful and dangerous as Bin Laden.

Edris is the founder of the Afghan Youth Society, which he says has about 5,000 members ages 18 to 35 living in Pakistan and 80 more who still reside in Afghanistan, whose population is about 22 million.

“We have a commitment to our nation and we want to describe the situation we have there,” the earnest-looking young man said in polished English at a Park City restaurant. He said they have assembled teams of young people who at great risk are planning to go into Afghanistan and film. But to do so requires training and digital cameras, which they hope to secure through donations from Americans. The youths are in need of financial support as well as cameras. The Just Think Foundation, based in San Francisco, is accepting donations for them.

Lenehan introduced the three Afghan youths to Rob Burke, a 16-year-old actor and filmmaker who lives near Seattle. Burke, known on the festival circuit for making three short films and a music video, agreed to take two to three hours of raw footage shot in the refugee areas of Peshawar and edit them.

In the resulting footage, the harshness of life for children of Afghan refugees is readily apparent. Children rummaging through mounds of garbage after flocks of sheep have just stopped to scour the piles of garbage for food. There are scenes of children making $1 a day selling cups of water to passengers on the city’s overcrowded and heat-seared buses, as well as scenes of drug sales and usage on the streets of Peshawar.

Even filming inside the refugees areas of Pakistan is dangerous, Elham said, because the Pakistani government is on friendly terms with the Taliban. If he or his sister or Edris are ever discovered taking covert pictures inside the refugee camps, it is always possible the Pakistani authorities could take a dim view and send them back to Afghanistan.

Some footage was shot over the past nine months by Elaha, who is studying journalism at Afghan University in Peshawar. She bashfully conceded that she would one day like to become the “Diane Sawyer of Afghanistan television,” provided a less fundamentalist government is installed to replace the strict Taliban.

Her mother once studied engineering in college while living in Afghanistan, but lost all that when the Taliban arrived, she said. “They are very strict,” Elaha said of the Taliban. “Women are nothing to them. They believe that for the woman, home is better than going outside and working. My mother was in Afghanistan and studying to be an engineer at Polytechnic University in Kabul. Then she graduated and worked and then moujahedeen came and stopped her working because they are not allowed to work. She just stayed at home. An educated woman just treated like an illiterate person.”

Burke said he was “‘blown away” by the footage that he edited. He said 14 hours of footage was shot in the camps. “I just thought it was pretty remarkable that they shot all that footage,” Burke said. “I saw kids sifting through garbage piles and a girl holding a baby as though it was a doll. But I also saw good things, like kids playing with toy cars and looking happy.”

Burke is meeting in Sundance this week with the exiled Afghans to teach them what he has learned about making films. They have also spent hours talking with other young people attending the Sundance Gen-Y Studio, where high school-age filmmakers have an opportunity to share ideas, explore film and learn about new technology.

“Here, we are meeting some of the guys who are quite good,” Edris said. “We want to hear their stories and learn what their perspectives are.”

He also said they would like to create a dialogue between the youth in America and the Afghan exiles in Pakistan. “Some of the youth in our country are burning American flags,” Edris noted. “Americans have turned into the biggest enemy of any Afghan. The ideology that is now being imposed on our people is that America wants to destroy your culture, your religion, your country.”

Asked if they are afraid to speak out about the Taliban or conditions in the refugee camps in Pakistan, the youths said they know the risk but want to do so anyway. Edris, who said he would one day like to return to Afghanistan and work in politics or government if a democracy emerges, said: “I know it is risky, but we are talking about the lives of 22 million people.”