The Domino Project deals with opening up intercultural routes based on digital video tools exploration. It is an exchange, a cooperation and a collective creation process between Marseilles (France), Skopje (Macedonia), Brussels (Belgium) and Belgrade (Serbia).It aims at developing a learning process mixing artistic and technical exploration. Opening up bridges with self-taught expression, which touches the heart of artistic creation and innovative process - the right to invent. Supporting cultural cooperation between Western Europe and the Balkans, whilst experiencing, by better understanding, the expectations of the possibilities of audio-visual expression.
Scripting a film: “The cosmopolitan Domino letter, from cliché to cliché”
Public encounter and presentation of the film has been held at "Press to exit project space", Skopje, June 18th 2005.
Presentation of the film in the framework of the “Xfilm festival for experimental film” Cinema Hall, Dom Na Kinoto 37 Ekzarh Josif Str. Sofia, April 22/26 2005.
Presentation of the project and its mediabase, in the framework of the Netd@ys meeting, at the Multimedia Cutural Space, Friche la Belle de Mai, 41 rue Jobin, 13003 Marseille, November the 26th 2004 , 2 pm.
Public screening of the film and exhibition “Travel moves” at the “Café Julien”, 39 cours Julien 13006 Marseilles, September the 30th 2004, 7 pm
We chose urban portraits as an obvious topic, because it is at least our common point. All the participants of this project are inhabitants from large European cities and thus share a cultural common fund that is our starting base. These portraits allow an evocation of differences and similarities, but we are at the same time close enough and a little distant, and this evocation avoids genuine game of contrasts.
We built working groups within the various countries, with directors bringing their knowledge to young people interested by image practice (whether they are cinema students, young video reporter, facilitators from the socio-cultural field or just neophytes). We imagined that the melting of origins and uses would bring an original film… We gave access to video and digital tools towards categories of population disadvantaged by urban geo-economic phenomena.
We first attempted to make video portraits of our own towns (video letters or video correspondences). Then we shot in Ohrid (Macedonia), which is the moment of our meeting and of our collective work , the account of our journey of learning. The human thus comes in stage in the film, within the meaning of an intimacy, after we had rather shot urban landscapes. Participants "direct themselves" in the scenery offered by the town of Ohrid and its neighbourhoods.
We used a film script based on sound and images, whether associated or dissociated, without using spoken languages. The information needed to understand our urban landscapes are sometimes be through image, sometimes through sound, and the synergy of the two languages give international meaning.
We also wish to tell the story of a stroll, seeking a common identity in this space where we were gathered, when the most come from elsewhere. The direction aims at evoking travelling, searching, discovering by filming the glances, the bodies which come into contact with the elements that compose these unknown places.
We will not have tasted every aspect of each other country, but images speak for themselves: an account without words that defines us, a dreamlike communication of our environment.
Our aim is to surpass the rude reporting that would freeze our socio cultural features, with a thought provoking account on stereotypes and representations we have of each other. Finally, each participant will be charged with taking a step back from his work.
In order to give account of the travel, both precisely and differently, we designed an exhibition entitled “Travel moves”:
12 printings devoted to the travel, 12 printings devoted to the portraits,12 printings devoted to Ohrid (Macedonia), 4 monitors for Marseilles, Skopje, Belgrade and Brussels video letters diffusion.
See the pictures of the exhibition, "Travel moves".
The mediabase is at the centre of the Domino project diffusion. A software tool easily offers " to drop " videos on the website, from wherever we are, and also provides the synopsis and credits information on the film which is presented to the net surfers/audience.
The people wishing to follow the cooperation process on our Intranet are invited to contact us.
The Domino Project is supported by the European Union (Youth Program), the Ministry of Youth (France), the General Council 13 (France) and the European Cultural Foundation. It is awarded Netd@ys label 2004, an initiative of the European Commission
