Workshops in Mauritius

In 2000, a workshop training course was set up at the Mauritius Film Development Corporation, bringing together 12 young people from various regions and communities in the country. The initial project was to develop an autonomous workshop: Varan Indian Ocean.

The challenge was to enable people from very separate communities which were normally extremely inward-looking and withdrawn, to meet, talk and work together. The workshop proved difficult because of a very strong tendency to self-censorship, the majority of the subjects linked to life in their island seeming to be taboo and impossible to reveal to others. However, a real cohesion took place in the groups and this course proved to be a very rewarding human experience. The 12 films which it produced are witness to the complexity and inequalities of Mauritian society.