Documentaries

The sale of educational DVD's help to fund the future documentary work of Zamani Refuge.

For information on how to make a tax-exempt donation to Zamani Refuge African Culture Center, email us at valrainybiz@charter.net

Through education, healing and forgiveness--we come home to Mother Africa.

Click here for the Marketplace where our documentaries are sold!

We bought our first camcorder in 2001, a Sony digital High 8. (Today six years later you can get much better camcorders at a fraction of the price we paid.)

We read some ‘How To’ books and by the beginning of 2002 we were ready to shoot our first documentary film. It was a 14-minute piece documenting our effort to organize the ‘Black History Month’ celebration in Sierra Vista, Arizona. This short film was broadcast on the local government channel.

Our second year celebration generated some conflict and resulted in a one hour documentary focusing on institutional racism. Eventually we combined the two films into a DVD titled “Two Februaries”. Our interest focus on bridging the cultural and racial divides in our world. To date we have produced over 20 hours of DVD’s many of which are being shown on our local public access station. Most recently we submitted the DVD “Priestess of Osun - My Practice” to the Atlanta Independent Black Film Festival. It was gratifying to be accepted and to see it on the big screen.

This past summer we spend three weeks in Nigeria using the very compact Panasonic PV-GS-400.

It is a three-chip camera no longer in production and can be found for around $700. It produces excellent video and has the ability to produce 4MB still images. We came back with over 20 hours of video. We have used the footage to complete three documentaries “The Sister City Project”, 28 minutes, “Priestess of Osun; My Nigerian Initiation”, 58 minutes and "Chief Atanda on Ancestor Veneration" , 94 minutes.

Enjoy telling your stories and documenting your life!