Film project gives voice to Syrian refugee children in Beirut

British teacher's project helps build their confidence and feelings of self-worth

The Underworld 2. Courtesy Aphra Evans

In a verdant garden filled with flowers, a father sits down with his son and daughter for a talk about their inheritance.

“You Mahmoud, as my only son, will inherit all of my riches,” he says, looking away from his daughter, who glares at her brother from beneath the edge of her hijab.

The Underworld begins as a family drama but quickly evolves into something much creepier. Mahmoud's sister takes a rickety old lift down to the basement, where she encounters a terrifying apparition that says it can help to prevent her irresponsible brother from frittering away the family fortune. When the sister emerges from this strange realm back into the real world, Mahmoud is mortally ill.

At just under six minutes, The Underworld packs an emotional punch. It was also conceived, shot by and stars children – from Mahmoud and his sister to the underworld demons and the siblings' father, played by a boy with a drawn-on Dali-esque moustache.

The film is one of six short works of fiction created during a six-week programme called The Refugee Film Project, organised by British teacher Aphra Evans.

Having spent two months this spring working at Bukra Ahla – a school for Syrian refugee children near the Palestinian camp of Shatila in Beirut, run by NGO SB Overseas – Evans decided to stay on and try to provide a creative outlet for the youngsters.

“With so many photos in the media of Syrians through a western lens, I think it’s important that they get behind the camera, as well as in front of it, to film their world in their own words,” she says.

“There were a few moments that sparked the idea… They loved taking photos and they loved handling technology, because that’s something different and something they didn’t really have access to at all.”

Along with filmmaker friend Shyam Jones, a translator and a professional cameraman, she worked with 20 children, ages 9 to 15, teaching them how to write and act in their own films, as well as technical skills such as how to frame a shot and focus the camera, use a green screen for special effects and shoot a scene.

At the same time, the adults were working on a feature-length documentary about the children’s lives in the camp, featuring interviews with their teachers and parents. Evans says they hope to release the documentary next year and show it at film festivals in Europe. In the meantime, they are uploading the children’s short films to YouTube.

In the first completed film, The Busker and the Thief, the camerawork is shaky and haphazard, unintentionally adding to the drama of a chase scene – but as the films progress the children's skills noticeably improve. The Kidnapping, a touching remake of the 1992 Hollywood thriller The Bodyguard, features a dramatic choreographed fight scene at a party.

And by the time Mahmoud's sister returns to The Underworld with two friends in tow, determined to save her brother's life, the quality of the filmmaking has dramatically improved. Shot in black-and-white, the scene is genuinely eerie, complete with menacing music and shuffling child zombies.

At first, Evans says, the children had trouble coming up with ideas for films, and she and Jones had to suggest the initial idea for The Busker and the Thief.

“There was this amazing process whereby towards the end of the project, four or five weeks in, we’d have a brainstorming session and they’d be clamouring – they’d all have different ideas,” she says.

Many of the ideas they came up with were influenced by their own lives – such as how to deal with bullying, issues surrounding money and security, and the idea of protecting a village from invaders – linked to their experiences in war-torn Syria.

“Obviously if you’re living in a camp like Shatila it does tend to mean that you can’t afford to rent elsewhere, outside of the camp,” says Evans. “So I think the reason money was a central theme is definitely related to their life experience, and I also think violence was perhaps more central than it would have been, maybe, with other kids their age.”

Since filming wrapped at the school, Evans has been approached by an organisation working in the Bekaa Valley that wants her to repeat the project at their summer school for Syrian refugees.

This time she is hoping to secure some funding, allowing her to donate cameras to the school so the children can carry on using the skills they learn during the project after it is over.

She believes the experience in Shatila has had a lasting effect on the children’s self-confidence, creativity and ability to work together.

“One of the things I noticed when I was teaching them was they have a very low tolerance for frustration,” she says.

“If they got one thing on a worksheet wrong they would cry and rip it up, even if they were 13 or 14 years old, and I think that’s something quite specific to them – so the idea of having a long-term project where you only see the fruits of your labour towards the end, I thought would be quite good for them.

“They had four adults willing to do whatever ridiculous thing they came up with, so the idea that they were centre stage and we were making them feel super important I hope built their confidence and self-worth.”

•To watch the children’s films, go to www.youtube.com