The cultural heritage and rich traditions of the Iraqi Yazidi community will be promoted through a captivating video series.
Yazd, a community-led organisation dedicated to aiding and empowering survivors of genocides of the Yazidi community in Iraq and around the world, announced to launch series for the preservation of Yazidi culture and promoting global awareness and fostering intercultural connections.
The Yazidi filmmakers who worked on the series for two years received training and assistance from the US-based Antiquities Coalition. The collection, which was made possible by a grant from United States Agency for International Development (USAID), covers a diversity of topics relating to the Yazidi community in Iraq.
Elise Jensen, the mission director for USAID in Iraq, claims, “capturing these practices on video gives the world a glimpse into these unique and intangible cultural practices.”
The project comes after the debut of the Yazidi Cultural Archives last year, which comprises four online exhibitions intended to serve as a long-term digital archive of Yazidi culture.
The exhibitions were created by 16 Yazidi female survivors of Daesh’s (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) genocide. Among those women was Malaeen Luqman Khalaf, who was 14 years old when Daesh swept into Sinjar, taking her and thousands of other Yazidi women into slavery.
Ten movies, including “Salfa Streeko,” a Yazidi folktale, and “Bayta Dne,” a religious hymn, were released earlier this month. Each week, Yazda will release two new videos from the collection, which will all be accessible on the company’s website and YouTube channel.
