19th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival
3-12 March 2017
Home New Home
Refugees and citizens from 6 welcoming countries
film the refugee crisis
The project titled “Home New Home” aims to address the refugee crisis and record it in short documentary films, as well as to highlight the views of citizens from six welcoming countries that serve as temporary homes in the refugees’ way to a better future. A presentation of this special initiative was held on Friday, March 10th at the Pavlos Zannas Theatre of the Olympion complex. Various cultural organisations, universities and NGOs from six different countries (Germany, Greece, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine) participate in the project. The event was organised by StoryDoc with the support of the 19th TDF.3-12 March 2017
Home New Home
Refugees and citizens from 6 welcoming countries
film the refugee crisis
Syrian refugees and citizens from the welcoming countries took part in workshops on how to make a short documentary. The workshops were held in six cities that receive refugee flows: Athens and Lesbos in Greece, Izmir in Turkey, Tyr in Lebanon, Amman in Jordan and Ramallah in Palestine.
The goal of the project is to get the citizens of these six cities meet the refugees, understand them and record their point of view in a documentary. Participants attend a series of seminars on filming, with the purpose of producing ten short films in Athens and another ten in the other five cities.
The guests of the event were welcomed by the Director of the Festival Orestis Andreadakis, who noted that “it is a great pleasure for the festival to feature this very important filming initiative”.
Director and producer Marco Gastine, who tutored at the workshops, took the floor saying that “with our work, we put people centre stage. We gave the camera to the refugees so that they would show us their reality the way they perceive it themselves. We are glad because we had many participants and lots of beautiful ideas resulted from this. Through filming, various humane issues are raised, such as the yearning of the refugees to make it to a safer place, but also the relationships built among refugees and volunteers in the hosting facilities”. He added that he was thrilled by a doc in progress concerning five young people coming from different countries, who are living together in a common place, seeking a common language, a common food, so that they can co-exist.
Director Angelos Kovotsos, who also tutored at the workshops, believes that through this project the most important thing is to reverse the common perception of what a documentary is. “We teach them the basics so that they may be able to ‘speak’ through the language of cinema. The workshop is not addressed to professionals; however, there are some younger participants who have aspirations to become directors. They get passionate about documentary filmmaking, and we witnessed that in Lesbos, Athens and Tyr, too. We try to encourage them to make their own films and many of them are particularly original. After all, art progresses with exceptions and not with rules”, the director explained. Every workshop participant comes with an idea for a documentary in mind and later on they are divided in categories according to age, from adults to children.
“We document their life in an authentic way”, added Kostas Spyropoulos, founder of “StoryDoc” and artistic director of the “AegeanDocs” International Documentary Festival. As he mentioned, “the hardest thing of all, in a country where Christianity and the western democratic model are dominant, is to understand the other. Even so, that is the challenge of this project. We share knowledge and information, which leads to feeling and even more knowledge”.
The project is supported by the Anna Lindh Foundation and the main partners are: StoryDoc (Greece), Yasar University (Izmir, Turkey), Theatre House (Tyr, Lebanon), the Palestinian Young Filmmakers’ Association (Palestine) and the Arab Women Media Centre (Amman, Jordan). The completed films will be screened at the same time in Athens, Lesbos, Izmir, Amman, Tyr and Ramallah within 2017. The initiative is co-organized by the Municipality of Athens, the Region of Attica, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (the exclusive benefactor of the “Open Schools” project), and is supported by Goethe Institut Athen.
The first documentaries which were completed were screened during the event:
• Hind by Aiwa Nazli Nasser,13?
• Nearby but Away by Heba Ryand Alkhuja and Fatema Saleh Achour, 10?
• Solidarity by Evi Sialevri, 15’
The seminars will be accompanied by a conference that will take place on March 20 and 21 in Athens. The tutors of the six cities will participate at the conference in order to discuss the conclusions of the project and exchange methods.
