Enhancing Nigeria’s Response to HIV and Aids (ENR) is the BBC World Service Trust’s new Pan-Nigerian, DFID-funded project which will focus on lowering the prevalence of HIV in the country.

An aspect of this is to help capacity building at national and state TV stations. This involves creating a TV training team which will then go out and provide training at local stations, including training on HIV reporting and co-producing with the station for several weeks.

Ambika Samarthya, an international trainer based in Abuja reports on the first stages of the three year project.

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After the feedback we received from the research and internal reviews of our two original TV pilots, I began training Devaan and Nasiru in the techniques and styles of documentary TV production.

Documentary TV is not necessarily news, but real-life stories told through people who are not actors: character-driven, real life narratives. It is not only the direction where our templates were headed, but what audiences globally have been leaning towards.

I explained to them the two necessities of this style of production: interesting stories and engaging characters. I then asked them both to choose a topic they were deeply invested in and to find a story and character with whom they would shoot an interview with.

Nasiru chose to focus on the housing market and the financial real estate crisis in Abuja. Here, real estate prices have hiked up so much that very few people can pay their rents. Ironically one of the victims of the housing market is Devaan, who bought her house several years ago but is suffering from loans and mortgage increases.

Nasiru knew Devaan’s story very well, but this was his first time shooting a documentary. He immediately wanted to shoot it at his house as opposed to Devaan’s because his house is closer and more in his comfort zone. I explained to him the importance of trying to get as close to the reality of the situation and location as possible. So they drove a distance to shoot the testimonial in Devaan’s house.

Watching Devaan tell her story as she washed dishes and gave a tour of her house was compelling, especially when she herself, a slick presenter, almost fell silent for a loss of words. You can’t script moments like that.

For her documentary, Devaan looked at sickle cell disorder – something she’s quite familiar with, as she herself suffers from it and for years has been an avid proponent of sickle cell research and education. She knew instinctively what she wanted to focus on and immediately decided to call up one of her fellow advocates, Eric Edoja, a man who is crippled with the disease and is now in the hospital without proper funds for care.

She shot his testimonial in the park, where he struggled to walk to a tree and finally to sit down. He began talking about how he lost two of his brothers to the disease and his role in advocacy.  But it was his face and voice which made for a moving interview. Nasiru suggested we use the video as a way for him to raise money for his hospital care.

I was moved with how compelling their exercises looked and am excited to see how they will produce the next two editions of the TV show.

At one point Nasiru told me, “Now I get it. For all these weeks we’ve been learning about all these techniques. But now I see how we can really use them.”

Promised a window into the real Iran, that is exactly what a packed audience at London’s Renoir Cinema were treated to last night in three short films full of the warmth, humanity and charm of the individual characters they featured. Executive produced by Maziar Bahari with the backing of the BBC World Service Trust, the shorts depicted a vibrant, chaotic city reflected in Tehran’s traffic-choked streets.

All three gave a unique perspective on daily life, gently poking fun at peculiarly Iranian restrictions on society whilst celebrating the natural humour of their subjects.

The central character in Behind the Wheel of Life takes her son to school, curses women drivers, sings along to her car radio and remonstrates with another taxi (“oh, I’m sorry you drove into the back of my car”) but finds the most peace driving the streets at night when the city is finally quiet.

Abbas, a motorcycle taxi driver in Of Men and Motorcycles (“taxi, free air-conditioning”) dreams of a steady job to support his family, but is forced to live day-to-day with the other riders, dodging police who can confiscate their bikes for not having a licence. But it is the ingenuity, humour and solidarity of the riders – who club together to buy Abbas a new bike after his is stolen – that really makes the film.

A cast of characters in My City Pizza got the biggest laughs of the night. A member of the morality police decries pizza as the citizenry’s new obsession, (“I like sheep’s head and trotters”) but an elderly man riding a taxi thinks that if pizza is essentially bread and tomato, “I’ve been eating it all my life”. The owner of the popular “Godfather” pizzeria attempts to distil the complex nature of Iranians themselves: “our features our Italian, our tastes American … and our bodies Indian” and insists that “Tehran has the tastiest pizzas in the world!”

As self-confessed Iranophile Jon Snow observed during a Q&A following the screenings, the films demonstrate both the challenges and opportunities of daily life in Iran. Maziar Bahari added that “nothing is impossible, everything is possible”, which is a welcome attitude; the importance of understanding Iran on such a human level cannot be underestimated.

The films will be showing at the Manchester Cornerhouse tonight, and at arts and cultural festivals in Iran.