The Social Media Exchange is our annual creative day for the charity sector celebrating the power of digital storytelling and its potential to have a positive impact on the world around us. At this year’s Social Media Exchange (#SMEX19) we were thrilled to welcome BAFTA-nominated producer, curator and storyteller Elhum Shakerifar as our keynote speaker. Elhum embodied our event theme – “Championing our Stories” making it her mission to amplify voices we need to hear through film and supporting others to do the same through her international film education projects.
“I produce films because I love stories, I love narrative. I work with people whose voices I want to hear.”
Elhum was listed as a Producer on the Rise by Screen in their 2018 Brit50. She was recipient of the BFI Vision Award in 2016 for producing and distributing documentaries through her company Hakawati with the core ethos that a good story is all in the telling. Recent credits include winner of the BIFA for Best Documentary Almost Heaven and Even When I Fall. Her BAFTA nominated production A Syrian Love Story (Sean McAllister, 2015) was named #3 Best Film of 2015 by the Guardian. She also produced McAllister’s 2018 A Northern Soul for BBC2. Her work has been broadcast internationally and screened at festivals including Berlinale, IDFA and Rotterdam. In 2017, she was nominated for the Arab British Centre’s Award for Culture and was awarded the Women in Film and TV Factual Award.
We were thrilled to have her share her experiences, listen to her keynote speech:
Find out more about Elhum’s films at www.hakawati.co.uk and follow her on Twitter @lalalooms and share your comments with us on the hashtag #SMEX19. You can read Elhum’s #SMEX19 script and watch clips of her films here.
We’re crowdfunding a six-month mentoring programme to form a network of media confident storytellers with lived experiences of the social challenges facing society today. Find out more and support our crowdfunder.
https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/beingthestorynetwork