Fall/Winter 2010 - Pingry School

Inside Out: Filmmaker Jeremy Teicher ’06 Gives Senegalese
Students the Chance to Be Heard
To prepare himself for a 2008 trip
to Senegal where he was planning
to work with elementary school
students on a video project, Jeremy
Teicher ’06 researched numerous
documentaries that had been
filmed in African schools. The filmmakers
seemed to be highlighting
only the schools’ shortcomings and
portraying the students in a pitiable
light. Mr. Teicher thought he
would approach his project from a
different angle—give the students
a chance to speak for themselves
and show the world who they are
as people.
“They’re proud of who they are and
proud of how hard they work, given
their resources,” he says. Mr. Teicher
gave 20 students 10 cameras and
instructed them to film each other in
everyday life situations. During his
visit, he observed that village families
cannot send all of their children
to school, so those boys and girls who
are selected to attend find themselves
in challenging positions of responsibility.
Mr. Teicher had found a new
goal: return to Senegal and allow
some of those students to share their
perspectives and personal stories
about school, to show people how
much they value learning, and to
inspire others to support education.
He applied for and received a
Lombard Public Service Fellowship
from the Dickey Center for
International Understanding at
Dartmouth College, from which he
graduated cum laude this past June.
These fellowships give Dartmouth
alumni the opportunity to pursue
community service projects in the
U.S. and abroad for six to 12 months.
Striving to give the Senegalese students
creative independence, Mr.
Teicher approached Kodak to secure
10 pocket-sized HD cameras. “This
Jeremy Teicher ’06 recording a narration voiceover with Debo, one of the students from the village of
Sinthiou Mbadane. She made a film about the cultural differences between the village where she grew
up and the town where she attends high school.
is content that I would never be
able to film with a traditional documentary
crew because the camera
makes the kids nervous. But these
small cameras are easy to use, and
the students can operate them on
their own,” he says.
The students in Sinthiou Mbadane,
a small village two hours south of
Dakar, chose their own topics for
the project, “This Is Us.” Mr.
Teicher, viewing what the students
had filmed, urged them to explore
certain areas further—in many
cases, that meant students interviewing
each other.
“Because these kids could work by
themselves, without any adults present
while they were recording, they
were able to express themselves in
new ways. Some of the boys and girls
look at the camera and say very
forceful things, such as wanting to
see their villages more developed,
wanting to end pre-arranged marriages,
and wanting to see their siblings
attend school. Without these
cameras, I don’t think they would
be saying these things to outsiders,”
Mr. Teicher says.
Audiences including diplomats, education
ministers, and other government
officials have watched the films
and been astonished by the students’
candor. “It’s not that these kids don’t
have anything to say—it’s that no
one has asked them before. They
never had a way to talk to people
who would listen,” Mr. Teicher says.
“It’s my goal that these films spark
conversations—or, at the very least,
open peoples’ eyes to these village
students’ amazing tenacity.”
Read more about the project on
Mr. Teicher’s web site, www.projectthisisus.org.
Editor’s Note: Mr. Teicher has been
making films since his freshman year
at Pingry, including videos for SAC
and Rufus Gunther Day, and thanks
fine arts teacher Peter Delman P ’97,
’98 for inspiring him to become a
filmmaker. His Dartmouth thesis film
Foursquare Day has screened in a
number of film festivals, including the
Los Angeles International Children’s
Film Festival in November. See a
selection of his work at www.vimeo.
com/jeremyteicher.
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fall/winter 2010