Yirmiyan Arthur Yhome: Speaking her heart in images

She comes across as a charming and friendly person whose zeal for living strikes you in the first impression. Moving beyond that, you find a very successful woman who has gone places both as a filmmaker and a photo editor of the world’s oldest and largest newsgathering organisation - Associated Press.

Yirmiyan Arthur Yhome is globally known for her award winning documentary film called ‘The Test’ which won the best film award at the First Red Ribbon International Film Festival held in Accra, Ghana, during 2011. The film, which highlights the story of HIV-positive women survivors, mostly widows, socially feared and surviving in loneliness, is unmistakably a product of an issue close to her heart even as she recalls that the main challenge for her in the process of making the film was understanding the reality of stigma. She explains, “I have relatives who are HIV-positive and we’ve never discriminated against them” although she is also quick to add, ‘Of course, both sides know the preventive care we need to take, but it was no different as taking prevention against TB or other infectious diseases’.

Baring her heart on this, she goes on to express, “They say education and awareness will help remove stigma and discrimination against HIV-positive people. Manipur and Nagaland boast of very high literacy rates. Bihar measures poor in scale. From what I saw during my travels in these states, there was less stigmatisation in Bihar as compared to Manipur and Nagaland. The AIDS awareness and sensitisation campaigns seem to have worked in the reverse in the North East, especially because of the projection of it being a disease of the sexually promiscuous. The Naga areas, especially, where religion (Christianity) plays such a major role, stigma is widespread because HIV is considered a disease of the morally ill! I was of the opinion that people know better now but yet hide behind the convenience of stigma rather than care for a sick relative. I foolishly thought stigma was just an excuse to justify the selfish nature of humans! And then I realised stigma was as real as my very existence!”

Well, she therefore ‘read and read and researched and read some more, going through dozens of reports from dozens of organisations who had dedicated years into combating the virus, printing more material than I could absorb’, as she puts it, but also says, “It was a very fruitful yet very exhausting journey...exhausting because I felt inadequate in expressing their lives on screen. Truth was that I was emotionally drained…”

However, deservingly, “The Test” secured the most online votes for best film beating ‘Tac Taking Haart’ (South Africa) and ‘Intersexion’ (South Africa) at the Red Ribbon International Film Festival.

So, how did filmmaking happen? She would tell you that next to her first childhood dream, which was to be a doctor, was the electronic media and confesses further that “because I am more of a Jack of Many Trades and being with a regular job, I haven’t had the luxury of time to make films.”

And yet, Yirmiyan has made quite a number of them such as “Phalee: the Good Land” that typifies any Naga village – the realities of memory and modern Naga – widows enduring with life and interpreting survival in the background the oldest armed-conflict in South/East Asia. This film was earlier premiered at the Museum der Kulturen, Basel, and at the Völkerkundemuseumder Universität, Zürich, Switzerland in 2009.

Another film she made is “A Sackful of Ganja” which is a short 2-min livelihood related film on the growing of marijuana as a source of income in a village in Ukhrul district. “My Lament, My Plea” was the final film she made while at the Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC), which also won the Best Film award at the New Delhi Video Forum and was further screened at the Human Rights Film Festival, Panchgani, India 2001.

Talk of her experience in filmmaking and she considers travelling with renowned documentary filmmaker Amar Kanwar in the Naga areas in two of his documentaries as valuable, even as she insists, “Though my role was minimal, I learnt by watching him work, the importance of respecting the private space of those projected in the film, the importance of voluntary consent of all involved.”

Delve deeper into what she does and she says without hesitation that “more than anything, I love, love, love editing – both still and moving images. I even love editing sound and used to stay for extended hours in the sound studio while doing my Masters. I love how stories evolve while editing. If I couldn’t tell human-interest stories with the work I do, I’d call it a day and start hunting for something else I might be good in.”

This also explains why she has been in the field for nine long years even as she speaks of her involvement with the Associated Press as a Photo Editor, South Asia Bureau, in that period but insists that it has not been long enough to be bored or feel the monotony of the job yet.

The highlight of her time with AP, she shares, is understandably the Olympics as she goes back to remembering the year 1984 in Kohima when television had just arrived and they were glued onto gymnastics in particular. Coincidentally, she says, “I was assigned to cover gymnastics, the dream sport of my childhood, partly because I could do splits and cartwheels. It has been the most thrilling part of my career so far, for sure.”

Well, she was also part of the edit team when Michael Phelps won his first gold in the 2012 Olympics. Recalling this period, she says, “Growing up with a brother who was part of a rock band, I didn’t know what ‘deafening’ meant until that night at the aquatics stadium. I wish I had the mastery of language, enough to explain the energy of those few seconds!”Some fun time with colleagues and firiends

“Then to be able to get exactly that time off to go and watch Mary Kom in her semi-final bout! Or to be watching the New Zealand All Blacks’ rugby team do the Haka with much pride, in their very own soil! These first-hand experiences are unparalleled and I have collected each with much pride, passing on stories to my little daughter, just like I remember my father passing on stories of his travels around the world…” she nostalgically puts across.

A glimpse into a day of a photo editor and you’d picture communication with their main photographers posted across South Asia and answering emails that might have arrived the night before. “The region being very diverse, quiet days with little happening are hard to find,” she enlightens. Post lunch, she says, is maddening most days where “images from all points start to land and we start our juggling act – decisions on which stories are more important than the others and need to be sent out soonest or catering to images according to time zones.”

In general, she says, ‘We keep 5 time zones in mind- Australia and New Zealand, South East Asia, South Asia, Europe and then the US’ while adding that this is not so

critical in day-to-day functioning, but when one travels on big sports assignments ‘this can be very crucial’.

She, however, emphasises that the greatest challenge is the time factor, while putting across, “Working with a news agency, time matters. This coupled with speed and accuracy increases stress at work. We are all perpetually looking up international competitors to make sure we’re in the lead or that we aren’t missing out on anything in the region. Also, dealing with dozens of photographers can be tough, some with inflated egos, having to deal with various sorts of characters and building trust. It is vital that the photographer trusts you enough to know his work is in able hands.”

Besides her love for images, Yirmiyan is a fierce crusader for children and education. “It may seem very insignificant but I like to spend time with parents of young children talking about the benefits of reading, about the importance of the home environment,” she says even as she professes, “Children’s education is something I hold very close to my heart and I hope in the years to come I can significantly contribute to it.”

Another issue she thinks she will inevitably find herself in someday is waste disposal. To this, she expresses, “I find myself appalled when I travel through Kohima town. It is everybody’s headache in Kohima but nobody’s responsibility. Just a month ago, I had this conversation with a government officer in Nagaland on this very subject. He said he was passionate about it but that he didn’t know where to start and that his not being in the municipal corporation department left him handicapped. I said my thoughts out aloud to him - If someone in his position and who feels about this could do nothing, how can we expect anything from lay people?”

Her dreams for Nagaland are plenty, and could not be possibly better expressed than the way she puts it – “A time when we don’t have to call any area ‘remote’, a time when education is real and not just statistics, a time when women are respected not just for their maternal roles but treated as an equal, a time when we can genuinely ‘vote’ in change or ‘vote’ out change, and because religion plays such a big role in our society, a time when ‘moral science’ is not just a subject in school and when faith is not superficial, and several, several more.”

While her one advice to the youth is, “Be proud of where you come from”, she shares her thoughts further saying, “We lose ourselves when we shirk from our roots. Our sense of pride is kind of warped, I feel. It is wrongly placed. If you respect where you come from, others will slowly be forced to see the good in it. If you’re ashamed of yourself, your culture, your people, it is easier for others to raise their finger at you or look upon you with contempt because you allow them the space to do so.”

The Photo Editor of Associated Press, South Asia Bureau, who also sings, would judge success by the bridges one builds wherever one is, whatever one does, and strongly holds that, “Like joy being best when shared, success is the feeling at the end of an assignment/work/day where you can celebrate with friends, where your contribution has mattered.”

“I don’t believe a person’s success is only measured over years. I believe it is at most times measured over shorter periods, over days, over assignments, over events…” she expresses.

She definitely fits in among those who have accomplished more than one fine thing in life and yet she finds it strange when asked what it takes to be where she is even as she responds with, “It almost embarrasses me.”

“Where am I? The day I am master of my own time, the day I can chalk out my routine according to exactly how I want my day to be is the day I might want to tell you what it takes to get there. For the moment, yes, I enjoy my work but I enjoy my family more and I wish I could spend more time with them. And yes, I’ve had my share of disappointments but I’ve always managed to dust myself and carry on…” she says.

She sees five years from now not very different from today, “….In my own little home, entertaining my daughter’s friends and extended family. The music of Astrud Gilberto gently wafting out the windows of my home. And yes, learning some Tenyidie,” she delightfully states.

Education and work have taken her to several places around the world. She did her studies in reputed institutes like the Maharani Gayatri Devi School in Jaipur, Lady Shri Ram College (LSR) in New Delhi, and Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC), Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi. But her take on life is simple because in spite of it all, she says, “What I learnt best was the gift of friendship and human relations. Relationships fuel me.”