Farkhonda is back: learning to combine journalism and i-Docs

Anne Guion, a French reporter from La Vie (a print weekly which belongs to Le Monde group) has used Klynt to create an i-Doc in under a week.

The narrative follows Farkhonda, a refugee from Afghanistan who has spent the last 12 years living in Australia, as she returns to Kabul.

Screen shot from Farkhonda is back

The idea originally came from Viviane Dalles, a French photographer who followed Farkhonda in Melbourne for two years. At the time she wanted to document the Afghan community in Australia, but as she discovered Farkhonda’s plans to return home her documentary expanded.

Funded by La Vie, Anne and Viviane travelled to Kabul with Farkhonda, spending ten days with her documenting her return to her home country. The pair came back with enough material to write up a print article and contribute video content to the iPad edition of La Vie, but also enough for an interactive documentary.

As Anne is a full time journalist in a small team for a weekly, the i-Doc is a shining example of what can be done with the online tools now available. As the journalism trade increasingly moves into the online sphere, it will be interesting to see if more journalists start to repurpose their content in the future.

Farkhonda is back is available to watch here – although the subtitles are in French, the majority of the dialogue is in English.

About Viviane Dalles (photos)

Viviane, (b. 1978) completed her Master in 2003 at the National School of Photography in Arles, France after which she worked on iconic photographic archives at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation. At the beginning of 2005, following the tsunami, she quit her job at the archives of Magnum Photos and bought a plane ticket to India. This first reportage changed her life. Her mind was made up from then on to become an independent documentary photographer. For the last 7 years, Viviane has travelled to Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Australia, New Zealand and her photographs have been published widely in the international press such as GEO Magazine, Le Monde, LaVie Magazine, The Guardian, Marie Claire, Brigitte, M Magazine, TIME, Le Figaro, Newsweek Japan, Internazionale, ELLE, Courrier International … She has also collaborated closely with the Norwegian Refugees Council / IDMC, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – UNHCR – and the International Organization for Migration – IOM. Her work is exhibited worldwide in countries such as France, Australia, United States, Nepal Italy and the Netherlands.

Her website : http://www.vivianedalles.com/

About Anne Guion (writer and videos)

My name is Anne Guion, I’m a French reporter from La Vie, a print weekly which belongs to Le Monde group. We’ve got 120 000 suscribers in France and French speaking countries.

I deal with international news and do reports mostly in African countries and Middle East. That was my third time in Afghanistan.

In 2007, I received the BayeuxCalvados Award of war correspondents for young reporter for a report about Kounoungou refugee camp in Chad. The year after, my report about « rape as a weapon of war » in Kivu, DRC, received the Ouest-France Jean Marin award also in the BayeuxCalvados Award of war correspondents.

I’m interested in interactive documentary and transmedia. Last May, I followed a course about i-docs in Emi-CFD school in Paris.