Profiles

When she's not living in deserts or rainforests, Joshka has called Shrewsbury 'home' since 2002, when she set up Sapiens Productions. Many of her films have been shown as part of the Earth Report series, produced by the Television Trust for the Environment for BBC World. Many of the documentaries have picked up international awards along the way.

Fluent in Dutch, English, French, German and Arabic, Joshka seems well-suited to her style of film-making. Rather than a quick visit to a region making the headlines, Joshka prefers to live within a community and develop a sense of trust and a working relationship with the people of the area.

Joshka has spent a lot of time filming in developing countries around the world. Syria, Darfur, Uganda and parts of South America have all provided backdrops to various stories about water, the environment, logging, mining, land rights and AIDS, and most importantly how those issues affect local people's lives.

Darfur

Operating in a rebel-controlled area of Darfur, Joshka and her team watched the desert creep ever closer to villages as people uprooted the few remaining trees to feed their fires: 'All these people needed firewood... It makes matters worse because the desert is coming in; you can see it happening in front of your eyes.'

At the southern edge of Darfur, the environmental effects of desertification have been compounded by civil war. A huge influx of refugees to the Abushuk camp has increased the demand for firewood and aided the desert's progress. The same refugees also risk attack, rape and death at the hands of bandits and militia - with 18,000 people estimated to have died in the last two years, the desert is the least of their concerns.

Uganda

Joshka was also on hand in the Gogonyo Pallisa district of Uganda when 18-year-old James, whose father had died of AIDS, learned that his mother was also HIV+. At a time in which AIDS victims too often appear as simple statistics on news reports or UN dossiers, James dealt with the news in a very human way, finding solace in his music: 'We normally don't sit and talk about my mother's condition... my siblings prefer to play outside. So what I do is to play my music, to make my mind at ease.'

Even when Joshka left Uganda, James's story still had one final twist: 'I was editing it here in Shrewsbury. I'd filmed it and it was ok... the shock came three months later when I heard from the organisation that he'd actually died himself. It gave me the drive to tell his story.'

Syria

Despite making films in Africa and South America, Joshka has a particular affinity with the Middle East. Before becoming a professional film-maker, Joshka spent a time working there for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, based in Syria.

Joshka returned to Syria with her camera to make a film about one remote village's ancient water tunnels. With a name which translates as 'little waterfall' the village owes its very existence to the Roman-built underground irrigation tunnels, locally called 'quanats'. Even today in the village there is one house called Bayt Joshka (meaning the house of Joshka). The documentary Tunnel Vision, filmed 2000-2003 was Joshka's first environmental film and picked up the Skoda EKOfilm Award in 2004.

Since then Joshka's work has been broadcast on BBC World, BBC News 24 and BBC One, and she's continued to pick up awards for her work. She's currently living in Shrewsbury, doing some lecturing at the University of Wolverhampton and studying for her PhD, basing her dissertation on Syria's ancient water tunnels.