EYE THROUGH THE LENS: The making of "Silent Killer" - Benjamin Ocaya
Do you love films? Do you love filming? I love doing them both, it makes me feel good, and it makes me feel happy. If you can’t find happiness in what you do, then you will never find happiness anywhere else in this world.
Sometimes the best gifts come in the worst packages. We need to learn to appreciate our lives just the way they are.
The idea of the ‘silent killer’ was born out of agony and pain I went through when I was under going treatment for Multidrug-resistant Tuberculosis in northern Norway. The treatment lasted more than three years. During this time, I thought a lot about the happy, innocent beautiful faces that I have always met on street and how their lives would be if they had MDR-TB, sad.
I thought of the best way to share my experience so that it would be helpful and maybe give people a different point of view of TB situation in the world. Much as I tried to write a lot about it, I felt that if I did something with passion, it would mean more than anything else. I thought I would make an audio-visual documentary.
This film project was a very big challenge right from the beginning. I wasn’t employed at that time and too weak to work as well. I tried to apply for funds from different organisations in vain. I thought the subject TB was not of interest at all as it didn’t seem to be a problem to the ordinary people in Norway.
I went ahead and started the filming. I put the camera on, sat on the sofa and just started talking. An opportunity opened up when I was invited for an interview about my life with TB by the Norwegian association for heart and lung patients, an organisation I was a member of. I tried to table my proposal but it didn’t seem to do well in the beginning on the grounds that they didn’t have the funds in their budget.
My close cooperation with them in developing a patient focussed booklet later opened way for a partial funding for my film project. The funds were limited and therefore couldn’t have an extra person to help me with filming. I did all myself, shooting and interviewing. What a challenge!
I travelled down to Uganda to take more shots but that did not go down well as a result of bureaucracy, I had no chance to meet the policy makers and other key players in the management and control of TB in the country, only a couple of patients who were undergoing treatment.
I believe that this film will be an eye opener for those who don’t know anything about TB and or think it’s not a problem anymore in their communities. This film will also be able to help former patients overcome stigma associated with TB. The public will get to learn that TB has no boundaries; it’s not confined to a certain category of people but rather the world as a whole. Based on the shared experiences of the living witnesses in the film, I hope that the patients can adhere to their treatment in order to avoid an outbreak of other strains of TB that might be disastrous to the society.
As long as people are empowered with knowledge, it increases their curiosity in the way they live their lives and I think this is very important in fighting TB.
I do believe that the fight for a world free of TB should not only be a campaign for free and or medication for all but also creating the awareness about the subject. This will help reduce the infection rate of TB in our local communities.
Together I believe we can!
