On Friday 24th May we visited Dorota Borodaj and Julia Åuczywo at the offices of the Association of Creative Initiatives, “ęâ€, in Warsaw.
Ä™ have been realising socio-cultural projects across Poland since 2002, working with photographers, filmmakers and animators. They train, support and empower young people to become makers themselves as well as using the expertise they learn through doing projects to help others to develop their skills.
Association of Creative Initiatives “Ä™” from towarzystwo inicjatyw twórczych on Vimeo.
Next we watched the “Women From Ravensbruck” film – click here to view.
A lovely example of a project Ä™ ran in 2011 was the Wyprawa Wernera Herzoga – a photo project for young people aged 12-17. The Salto group were very taken with the vivid images and the freshness of the perspectives.
Another recent project is called Remapping Europe, with Ä™ working as part of the Doc Next Network to gather “remixes” (collage videos made up of stills, animation, found footage and regular filmed footage) to contribute to an inclusive cultural practice and public imagery in and of Europe by connecting young creative media-makers who have (im)migrant backgrounds and perspectives from Spain, Poland, Turkey, and the UK to wider European intergenerational audiences.
Click here for the Remapping Europe blog with links to some of the submissions. “Migration – An Interactive Animation” is a particular highlight.
Since starting to do this sort of work Dorota doesn’t think Poland is multi-cultural at all, but there are hidden neighbours – she gave Chechnyans and Vietnamese first generation as examples – who you only see if you have business with them.
Saying their work has raised far more questions than answers, Dorota summed up her current feeling that “the question is how can film and photography make communities more visible – we don’t know yet.”
Today the participants reflected on the visit:
