A collaborative effort across academic disciplines and universities has led to a groundbreaking new project that creates a platform for sex workers to share their realities of the corrupt policing of sex work in South Africa.
The audience at the launch of the Digital Stories.
The University of the Western Cape’s (UWC) Faculty of Law joined forces with the University of Missouri’s (UM) Department of Visual Arts in the United States to create Aliens from the Sky, a series of digital stories that not only gives a voice to sex workers, but is also an advocacy tool for protecting and advancing sex workers’ human rights.
This was a collaborative effort between UWC Law’s Cherith Sanger and filmmaker Katina Bitsicas from UM.
Cherith Sanger, a lecturer at UWC, said: “These digital stories raise critical issues about the corrupt policing of sex work in South Africa. It involves sex workers, as a marginalised group of persons who are often silenced by stigma, discrimination, and criminalisation, telling their own stories of corrupt policing”.
At the launch event recently, Aliens from the Sky made its on-screen debut. UWC Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic, Professor Vivienne Lawack, commended the partnership and everyone involved in the project for taking the initiative to empower themselves and those featured in the digital works. “If we don't tell our own stories, our stories will be told by other people using their own narrative, their own kind of judgement and filling in the blanks that only we can actually give.”
Prof Lawack added: “This is for me the power of storytelling, because when you tell your own story, you reflect on where you are as a person, how you've come to be where you are at, and that story is nobody else's story. We've often seen in history how, when we don't get to tell our stories, it gets a totally different slant. And then we don't have agency.”
Many of the sex workers featured in the digital stories attended the launch event. After the screening, the audience participated in a panel discussion.
This project between UWC and MU is the culmination of a long-standing collaboration that has been academically beneficial across many of the university faculties in South Africa and in America.
After the debut screening of Aliens from the Sky, filmmaker Katina Bitsicas confirmed that the digital stories will continue to be flighted at various film and art festivals in the near future, including at the film festivals in Germany, America and Ireland.
The audience at the launch of the Digital Stories.The University of the Western Cape’s (UWC) Faculty of Law joined forces with the University of Missouri’s (UM) Department of Visual Arts in the United States to create Aliens from the Sky, a series of digital stories that not only gives a voice to sex workers, but is also an advocacy tool for protecting and advancing sex workers’ human rights.
This was a collaborative effort between UWC Law’s Cherith Sanger and filmmaker Katina Bitsicas from UM.
Cherith Sanger, a lecturer at UWC, said: “These digital stories raise critical issues about the corrupt policing of sex work in South Africa. It involves sex workers, as a marginalised group of persons who are often silenced by stigma, discrimination, and criminalisation, telling their own stories of corrupt policing”.
At the launch event recently, Aliens from the Sky made its on-screen debut. UWC Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic, Professor Vivienne Lawack, commended the partnership and everyone involved in the project for taking the initiative to empower themselves and those featured in the digital works. “If we don't tell our own stories, our stories will be told by other people using their own narrative, their own kind of judgement and filling in the blanks that only we can actually give.”
Prof Lawack added: “This is for me the power of storytelling, because when you tell your own story, you reflect on where you are as a person, how you've come to be where you are at, and that story is nobody else's story. We've often seen in history how, when we don't get to tell our stories, it gets a totally different slant. And then we don't have agency.”
Many of the sex workers featured in the digital stories attended the launch event. After the screening, the audience participated in a panel discussion.
This project between UWC and MU is the culmination of a long-standing collaboration that has been academically beneficial across many of the university faculties in South Africa and in America.
After the debut screening of Aliens from the Sky, filmmaker Katina Bitsicas confirmed that the digital stories will continue to be flighted at various film and art festivals in the near future, including at the film festivals in Germany, America and Ireland.
