Director Interview: Mona Eldaief and Jehane Noujaim on RAFEA: SOLAR MAMA

A few days before their premiere at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, directors Mona Eldaief and Jehane Noujaim talk to Goldcrest about the Barefoot College in India, where illiterate grandmothers become solar engineers, in their documentary Rafea: Solar Mama.

Interviewed by Stephanie Buhle
 
 
GOLDCREST:
Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I know you two have a very busy schedule right now!
 
JEHANE NOUJAIM:
No worries. We are so grateful to Goldcrest, because you guys came in at the last minute and allowed us to finish this film, and it’s just been great.
 
GOLDCREST:
I’m glad you’ve been having a good experience! So how did you find out the Barefoot College?
 
JEHANE NOUJAIM:
I met Bunker Roy at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010. He had been nominated as a Skoll Fellow, and Sundance and Skoll have a partnership where they introduce filmmakers to social entrepreneurs with the hopes that maybe a movie will come out of it. So I was the filmmaker and he was the entrepreneur. We were standing outside in the falling snow of Utah, and he told me about this school that he’d started halfway around the world in Rajasthan called Barefoot College. He told me that the students are grandmothers from rural villages who learn how to become solar engineers: to make charge converters, solar panels, solar cookers. After six months they go home, and they basically turn on the lights in their villages, train others, and eventually start their own Barefoot College. I thought, “How is it possible that women from rural villages in the Arab world would be able to convince their families to allow them to travel all the way to India?” I wanted to see it for myself, and very luckily, he let me do that.
 
GOLDCREST:
How long has the Barefoot College been around?
 
MONA ELDAIEF:
Bunker started it over thirty years ago. These women are grandmothers and illiterate and off the grid completely, and it’s giving them the chance to empower not only themselves but the entire village: to have a sustainable energy source and a sustainable income source. He really believes that grandmothers – his theory is right on, by the way – that grandmothers don’t leave the village. Rafea, being a young mother as opposed to a grandmother, she had young kids, so it wasn’t cool for her to leave her village and her young children.
 
GOLDCREST:
And how did you find Rafea?
 
MONA ELDAIEF:
Well, here’s the thing: when we first arrived at Barefoot College, there was a huge language barrier, obviously. And the College thrives on that, because they teach through color-coding and memorization. The only language spoken is broken English and a bit of Hindi. And it’s great, because most of the women are illiterate, so they don’t read and write, and they do learn from the color-coding and memorization. But for us as filmmakers, between Jehane and I, we spoke Arabic and French, understood Spanish, and a word or two of Swahili, but there were very remote dialects of the Maasai tribe. So we would get a translator in, but you really can’t get that intimacy unless you really speak a common language.
 
To tell you the truth, once Rafea got called home, that was it. Because that scene where she’s convincing her mother, “We have to do something with our lives” – that was it. We knew. There was conflict, a dramatic arc in the story, and she was going to fight hell and back, and it meant something. So it wasn’t going to be just six months of circuit installation, circuit installation – eight hours a day! I’m sure you can see the arc and the transformation in any one of these women’s stories, but for her, she really had to fight for it.
 
GOLDCREST:
You started with a 58-minute version and decided to expand to a feature…
 
MONA ELDAIEF:
We’re part of a series called “Why Poverty?” which is eight different films. Originally they were commissioned for broadcast, all over the world, so we made a 58-minute version.
 
JEHANE NOUJAIM:
We were very, very lucky to get that kind of access to Rafea, because they’re very conservative, and most of these women are not seen without a head covering or a veil, much less filmed, and without their husbands, right? You really want to give the audience the experience of being in a tent with Rafea through this experience, so the real joy of being able to make a longer film was to really give audiences that feeling. We were able to add a fuller ending as well, so we were able to really get into the dynamics of Rafea’s relationship with her husband and also what happens to her husband at the end, which I won’t say, because I don’t want to ruin the film for the people who haven’t seen it!
 
GOLDCREST:
So how would you characterize the film in a one-line description?
 
JEHANE NOUJAIM:
The film celebrates the story of overcoming what feels like an insurmountable obstacle. It follows Rafea, a young woman who lives in one of Jordan’s poorest desert villages, and she’s given a chance to travel to India to become a solar engineer. And if she succeeds, she will electrify her village and be able to provide for herself, but I think the biggest challenge that she faces is, Will she be able to succeed in changing the traditional minds of the Bedouin community that she grew up in? Can she rewire the community and rewire the minds of everybody around her? 
 
GOLDCREST:
It’s pretty extraordinary how dramatic the difference is between men’s and women’s roles in that village, and also their sense of self. Literally, women saying, “I’m not intelligent enough to work,” at the end when Rafea is trying to encourage them to work.
 
MONA ELDAIEF:
I know, I know. It’s beat into them. And you can see that when she first comes back, and she’s trying to convince her mother and her sister-in-law that they have to do something with their lives: they’re basically resigned to their hopelessness.
 
GOLDCREST:
Yeah, “All we can do is drink tea and smoke cigarettes.”
 
MONA ELDAIEF:
It is basically the cycle of poverty and oppression. It’s like, “This is the way it’s always been, and nothing’s going to change, so stop thinking that you can do something about it.” Rafea just has such an extraordinary strength of character, and all it took was just the Barefoot College for her to realize her potential. It was just that opportunity, and her eyes opened.
 
GOLDCREST:
Absolutely. To feel like she didn’t need permission.
 
MONA ELDAIEF:
Yeah. Almost to a dangerous level, she realized her potential! Because there are still definite restrictions for her there, in that village, as a woman.
 
GOLDCREST:
Why did the Jordanian government and the Barefoot College insist on going through Abu Badr to make all of the negotiations? It’s strange; it seems that Barefoot College understands the importance and stability of women in the Middle East in these rural, low-income areas – that they’re the pillars of the community more than men – but at the same time, they still went through Abu Badr. Why was that?
 
JEHANE NOUJAIM:
In these tribal communities, you really have to have the support of a male elder who has a leadership role in the tribe in order to allow the women to leave. But I do think that it’s important that the actual control of the project is in the hands of the women. It’s very tricky in situations like this, where the money and decisions are generally controlled by men. That’s why this film becomes much more than looking at the solar power and more about, What does it take to shift the power dynamics in a village?
 
Mona constantly was saying, “You need to make sure that this project is in the hands of the women, because the minute it falls into the same old power structures, the purpose of the college is defeated.”
 
GOLDCREST:
What are your plans are moving forward after Toronto?
 
JEHANE NOUJAIM:
I am heading straight back to London, because we are almost finished editing The Square, which is a film that I’ve been making about the Egyptian Revolution, which we’re also going to be working with Goldcrest on.
 
MONA ELDAIEF:
The most important thing for me now is to try to get Rafea to some festivals in the Middle East, so she can really feel the direct effect of how she’s affecting women. Because this is a bit of a risk for her, you know? When the film comes out, there’s not only going to be issues of when she had her veil off, when she was dancing – but there’s going to be jealousy, so they’re going to be ready to attack. But if she has that confidence from seeing an audience reaction and how she affected people, that’s going to make a big difference, because that’s all she needs to stand on her own ground and fight.
 
GOLDCREST:
She hasn’t seen the film?
 
MONA ELDAIEF:
No, not yet. I hope to fly within the next month to Jordan and show it to her.
 
GOLDCREST:
That’s really exciting.
 
MONA ELDAIEF:
I just talked to her yesterday about it. She’s just more concerned with clothes and veil or no veil, as opposed to – you know, I was like, “There’s a lot of fighting with your husband,” and she said, “I don’t care, that’s what happened! That’s what I wanted the world to see!” So I was like, “Ok, thank God!”
 
GOLDCREST:
And what advice would you give to other documentary filmmakers?
 
JEHANE NOUJAIM:
Follow your heart. If you’re waking up and filming something that excites you and makes your heart pound and stokes your curiosity every morning, you should keep filming. And if you’re bored, you should go find another subject. Because if you’re bored, then you’re going to bore an audience, but if you are excited, that’s always the test, I think.
 
MONA ELDAIEF:
The point of documentary for me is to defy stereotypes; you want to see chapters from both sides and let the audience make their own conclusion. If your subject matter really feels that in you, then they really open up all angles of their life. That’s the most rewarding thing for me, because you can really come in and share people’s stories that no one would have ever seen before. And especially a case like this, about a Middle Eastern woman, there are so many women like her, and their stories are never told. Rafea’s a great example of somebody who’s beautiful and smart and funny and charming, but there are so many out there. She’s just one person.
 
 
Rafea: Solar Mama did color correction at Goldcrest Post New York and audio mix at Goldcrest Post London.