Kiripi Katembo Siku, an art school student from the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a film maker with ingenuity and a mobile. He circumvents the restrictions and government censorship in Kinshasa, the country's capital, by attaching his mobile phone to a toy car, setting it to film, and then giving it to a girl to pull behind her on a piece of string as she walks through the streets of Kinshasa.
The resulting "Voiture en Carton" ("Cardboard Car") provides a rare glimpse of street-life in Kinshasa. The seven-minute film gives the viewer a clandestine look at life in the capital -- feet of children, youth gambling, and an UN jeep passing by.
According to CNN, he is one of a number of filmmakers in the DR Congo who says that using a mobile phone allows him to film in ways that were previously not possble. Film makers there say that filming permits are not given out anymore to avoid exposing corruption, poverty, and crime. Those brave enough to defy the authorities and shoot without permission risk fines, arrest, or worse.
MobileActive has aggregated dozens of videos focused on the use of mobile phones in civil society on our new MobileActive YouTube channel.
The MobileActive channel features playlists about mobile phones used in a variety of different fields. On the Mobile Phones in Advocacy playlist, you can watch videos about Greenpeace Argentina's work to pass the Ley de Bosques (Forest Law) by using mobile phones and an advertisement for FishMS, a South African SMS infoline that allows users to text in the names of fish and get a rating about their environmental sustainability. Watch the Mobile Phones in Global Development channel for videos on mobile banking, the Village Phone program, and the growth of mobile phones in the developing world. Check out the Mobile Phones in Human Rights playlist for a variety of videos of human rights abuses taken on mobile phones, including the mobile videos of Egyptian police brutality by blogger Wael Abbas.
