After 3 eventful weeks, my time with the Sharek participants has come to an end. The last sessions were a particular challenge: very, and I mean very, few students had actually done any filming, so the plan (to focus on editing their material) had, as usual, to bend a bit. Yet again, there were new students in each group, and in one workshop I didn’t even have a marker for the whiteboard. Oh, and still, I had no filmmaker to help. Zaina, above, a fabulous final year Birzeit Radio Broadcasting student, provided some excellent assistance at two of the workshops however.

By this point, of course, I was seeing all these less as obstacles and more as ‘interesting constraints that promote more inventive teaching’.  Hmm.

The question now is – will any films come out of this?  All participants had a week after their last workshop to submit the films to Amin. The best one from each group would then compete for a spot at the film festival in September.  Watch this space…