Localfilms is a grassroots production company that partners with international humanitarian organizations to empower communities through film. Filmmaker Peter Jordan provides children and adults with the equipment and knowledge to make their own movies, which have examined from a local perspective issues of gender, education, famine, illness, and community. To date, Localfilms has collaborated with communities in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania, Botswana, and Zimbabwe and screened at conferences in Asia, Europe, and America and in villages throughout Africa. You can view many Localfilms in their entirety on this website. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or requests.


The Children They Are Left With

Zimbabwe, 15 min, 2004
dir. Peter Jordan

With a generation of adults being claimed by AIDS, in many African villages a generation of children is growing up without parents. Although orphanages can help meet these children's material needs, finding ways to support orphans within their home villages, where they already have strong cultural and personal ties, may better support them emotionally.

In The Children They Are Left With, four children, under the charge of their 14-year-old sister, fend for themselves amidst the crumbling ruins of the house their late parents left. Remarkably, the children are less filled with self-pity than with love, which binds them as they wash, farm, and study together in pursuit of a brighter future. The children co-direct and narrate the story themselves.

Produced in partnership with Catholic Relief Services (Zimbabwe).