Nature Through Her Eyes
Nature Through Her Eyes is dedicated to advancing women’s impactful contributions to filming the natural world. Our tuition-free educational programs offer high-level training and mentorship to women filmmakers worldwide.
VII Academy works with Jacqueline Farmer to mentor female African filmmakers so they can document their vision of natural history. This partnership began because we jointly identified a problem, proposed a training solution, and set up a mentoring system. As a result, we have developed new capacity that produces new perspectives.
Nature Through Her Eyes is dedicated to advancing women’s impactful contributions to filming the natural world. Our tuition-free education programs provide high-level training and mentorship to women filmmakers worldwide. They provide them with the tools to define their contribution and craft stories that resonate with a global audience. Since 2019, NTHE have trained more than 350 women worldwide across filmmaking and photography in countries as diverse as South Africa, Gabon, India, Kenya, Senegal, and Tanzania, among others. We have shown student films to over 5,000 spectators globally.
The NTHE partnership trained the first female African marine biologists to swim and film underwater. In September 2022, it taught natural history filmmaking to emerging Senegalese filmmakers. NTHE trainees are being commissioned for documentary projects in Asia and Africa. Among them is Erica Rugabandana from Tanzania, the first woman to make a film about lions in East Africa, Kuishi na Simba, a multiple award winner at the 2023 Pridelands Film Festival in Kenya, now streaming online, and a resource for lion conservation education in communities and schools in the region.
Nature Through Her Eyes has three initiatives: education and training, continued mentorship, and a bi-annual festival.
“Storytelling is a way of reclaiming the narrative. Through storytelling, we are challenging the seats of power and retelling stories about relationships with the land. The goal is to reframe our stories to include the perspectives of women, black and indigenous communities, and other historically marginalized communities.”
— Faith Briggs. Filmmaker and keynote speaker at Nature Through Her Eyes, 2019.
Structured Education
Working within the nature and environment space, Nature Through Her Eyes offers structured education to women in filmmaking in the natural world. Our NTHE tuition-free programs equip storytellers with the tools to define their contribution and create stories that resonate. We provide technical guidance, equipment, in-the-field training and opportunities for professional collaboration.
Nature Through Her Eyes training programs are held in-person and online, and are based on a 3-level structure:
Level 1 is a 12-week program held online for 10-12 women filmmakers. We hold two Level 1 courses annually on documentary filmmaking and production, including classes on structure, writing, research, budgeting, and production.
Level 2 is a 12-week online program that takes the 10 best students from Level 1 and equips them with additional skills, extending the concepts from Level 1 and adding business skills, copywriting techniques, and networking advice. We hold two Level 2 courses annually.
Level 3 is an all-inclusive 10-12 week in-person program comprising the most accomplished students from Level 2.
We also run an online legal course in partnership with the Jackson Wild Film Festival, specifically tailored for women.
Continued Mentorship
A vital part of NTHE’s work is the continued mentorship of filmmakers, accompanying their projects to international distributors to secure financing and facilitate the delivery of films for global public audiences.
Nature Through Her Eyes mentorships enable mentees to foster robust connections with decision-makers and organizations. Under Jacqueline Farmer’s guidance, filmmakers receive support from project inception to funding and production.
To date, several of our mentees have secured National Geographic Storytelling Grants and endorsements from streaming platforms and international co-productions. In 2021, an NTHE team traveled to South Africa to train a group of ten African women storytellers and scientists in underwater cinematography and narrative storytelling as part of a divemaster program financed by NEWF. Before this, there were no African women underwater cinematographers. The project has since become a 2-part international co-production. Looking forward, NTHE will continue to support several individual and collaborative projects.
NTHE continues to mentor and train Erica Rugabandana. Erica is Tanzania’s first woman long-lens wildlife camera operator and director, following prolonged training on camera and documentary writing and production with the NTHE team. In June 2023, she finished her feature documentary Kuishi na Simba (Living with Lions), which tells the story of the human-wildlife conflict between lions and Ikoma villagers living on the boundaries of the Serengeti National Park. It has since received multiple awards and has been showcased at national and international events, educating local communities and fostering meaningful dialogue among stakeholder groups.
Bi-Annual Festival
In presenting an opportunity for practitioners in the natural world to convene and share their knowledge, the Nature Through Her Eyes Festival supports women filmmakers and photographers across education, access, and advocacy. The festival accelerates the NTHE mission and promotes new narrative projects through collaboration with industry leaders, workshops, masterclasses, and seminars.
The inaugural edition of the Nature Through Her Eyes Festival was held in Perpignan, France, in 2019 and explored women’s perspectives in portraying the natural world and why it is essential for society as a whole. In November 2022, the second NTHE Festival took place in Cape Town, South Africa. It was supported by French and South African government organizations and focused on bioacoustics and sound in natural history filmmaking. It included an ocean trip with hydrophones, a series of impactful talks led by African women, and sold-out screenings of films by female directors at the Labia Theatre. A photography exhibition was inaugurated at the French Institute and ran for over four weeks.
Highlights so far
Erica Rugabandana’s feature documentary Kushi na Simba or Living with Lions achieved global release this year after winning Best of Festival, Best African Film, and Best Storytelling at the Pridelands Film Festival in Nairobi. Kuishi na Simba was released globally by Curiosity Stream in October 2023 and emerged as the most-viewed program during its premiere on the platform.
In May 2023, sponsored by NTHE, Erica Rugabandana began a six-month Impact Filmmaking course led by Dr. Liaani Maasdorp from Cape Town University. The film serves as a powerful educational tool and community event, reaching five communities so far and being presented to 1,500 school children and 2,400 adults across Tanzania. In 2024, the impact campaign will continue to travel across Tanzania and Kenya in collaboration with the WWF and the FZS. The film will be broadcast free-to-air on Tanzanian national television, and most recently, it has received financing from the Australian High Commission for distribution across East Africa.
Two Senegalese filmmakers from the NTHE teaching group have won a scholarship to join a field training session in the Masai Mara with Dr Paula Kahumbu.
The 2-part documentary series, The Big Little Things, written and directed by a collective of ten African women that won Best Wildlife and Conservation Pitch at the Sunny Side of the Doc in 2022 was signed in development by ARTE in February 2023. The project has become a co-production with CBC in Canada.
How you can support us
All our training is tuition-free and will always be. We want our training to be free of charge for its deserving recipients because building capacity for women and their perspectives in the genre of natural history filmmaking is crucial.
Our mentees’ perspectives are vital to all of us. As a new generation of visual storytellers, conservationists, and scientists emerge, we want to expand our work to change the discourse and create an extensive body of pioneering work as we have described above.
Please contact Jacqueline Farmer, Director of Nature Through Her Eyes, if you would like to discuss our NTHE programs and know more about how you can support us to empower new voices in natural history filmmaking.
