SUARA COMMUNITY FILMMAKING is additionally proud to be working with some of the best professional storytellers and filmmakers in Malaysia, who provide their time, expertise and love to train community filmmakers in village workshops and the intensive training workshop held at the September festival each year. Finally – and because the sweetest packages come – Suara Community also works with organisations who support the participation of community filmmakers in our training workshops.
On a yearly basis, the Suara training programme takes place over a period of roughly eight months stretching from about March to October.
In this period, three thematic workshops are held in different and mostly rural areas throughout Sabah, focussing on the topic areas of storytelling, film production and video editing. Over each workshop, participants gather for three to four days to work with selected industry professionals who act as trainers and mentors. Most workshops feature exercises where participants experiment and explore the different aspects to filmmaking and, on occasion, produce a short film within the duration of the workshop. A final intensive workshop runs for five days (usually held in late September or early October to coincide with BEFF’s festival weekend) and is a hotly anticipated, high-energy, hands-on process covering the full suite of filmmaking stages, techniques and styles.
Suara Community Filmmaking is open to indigenous and local community filmmakers and admission is free. For more information, contact info@beff.org.my.

Map showing villages where teams active in the Suara Programme are based. Dec 2016