Yellow House Afghanistan directed by George Gittoes

As much as any travel film, Yellow House Afghanistan enters spectacularly beautiful landscapes which have never previously been filmed. Many times, I have looked down at my feet and known what it must have been like to be an Apollo Astronaut seeing their feet on the surface of the moon. It is incredible that I safely entered villages, where the people were kind and welcoming to me, when they have all had someone close killed by outsider invaders. They needed to hear someone like me say, “sorry”. I am the only foreigner in our camera team when going out to the far villages in the mountains besides Hellen.

All the editing has been done in Jalalabad at the Yellow House to enable the participants to check-out the process. I have edited with Khurram Shehzad and Waqar Alam, who are both Pashtuns, and who have collaborated on all the Afghan documentaries and dramas since 2007. The music has also been recorded by Hellen with top Afghan musicians, generational custodians of Pashtun culture, who have been coming to the Yellow House since 2011 in collaboration with famous Australian musicians who have created a unique and intercultural soundtrack.

What makes this film different to any of my previous documentaries is that I have used time as a plastic element. Yellow House Afghanistan has become a TIME MACHINE with characters who were teenagers in 2011 participating as adults in 2024. In one case a 13-year-old, first-time- filmmaker, sees himself, in ‘Love City’, as a newborn baby. In my own case I transform, on camera, from middle age to a 75-year-old. It has been a long journey.

Our aim with ‘Yellow House Afghanistan’ is to show how art and communication can succeed when war has failed.