Sarah Begum, adventurous filmmaker
Posted Friday 31 May 2013
Sarah Begum, Kingston University alumni and adventurous filmmaker, has had her film Amazon Souls, accepted for the 2013 Cannes Film Festival's Short Film Corner'. This is a great achievement being one of a handful selected from 3,500 films submitted. The film then went on to be selected for the 2013 Sheffield Doc/Fest Videoteque, whittled down from 8,000 entries to one of only 80 films showing this year.
At the age of 21, Sarah, realising an ambition of a lifetime, went to live with and document a remote tribal community deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest. Sarah produced, directed, presented then edited this film and funded the whole film through her life savings and private investors and described making her film as "a life changing experience". In 2009, Sarah won a place at the Enterprising Student Awards for her then Amazon film idea, and was recognised as the only woman out of the first 10 specially selected participants on this award. This award funded her plane ticket to the Amazon and her volunteer fee for the first two weeks where she taught English to children in the Amazon schools for a charity organisation before travelling deeper into the pristine jungle. Sarah then participated in the Enterprising Business Awards 2010–12. View stills from the film and visit the film's official Facebook page.
The very next day after finishing university, Sarah was booked on a flight to Ethiopia and her talent was obvious when she worked with Enterprise Support's Ranes Formosa and social entrepreneur Andre Campbell (also Kingston University graduates), filming and working on the delivery of the Bright Futures project at four different cities in Ethiopia alongside Stephen Whaley and Alchemy World NGO. There, the team delivered three-day intensive workshops, teaching students how to set up their own businesses. See images and a video of the project.
Sarah's work with film continues through her company Sarah Begum Films and various other collaborations and she remains connected to Kingston University with business mentoring from visiting entrepreneur Simon Hulme and Professor David Stokes.
To keep up to date with Sarah's work, follow her on Twitter: @Sarah_Begum and Facebook and visit her website: www.sarahbegum.tv.
View a gallery of Sarah's adventures:
