Documentary Projects
To all the travelers, who came in to Kosovo, I wish you had a good experience and hope that you learned something new. Kosovo is a small country but the people are the best host ever which make them big. I would like to say that you’re welcomed here at anytime that you want, we welcome you.
I know that some of you are planing to be here for a more longer time, so take that into consideration. T.S
This past weekend on July 15, 2016, Emily and I met with Zaneta Trajkoska to discuss the Colorful Revolution that is taking place in Macedonia. Zaneta is the director of the Macedonian Institute for Media and she has been involved with some of the organizers of these protests taking place as well as journalists who have been out covering the protests.
In our meeting, a point that Zaneta talked about that I found intriguing was a trending hashtag for the revolution. #protestiram, which means “I protest” of one of the hastags used on social media platforms, especially Facebook. This means that even though the protests are a group effort to put in place, each person is there protesting for themselves. Each of them are individuals protesting for their own specific reasons, because of how they are affected by the actions of the government and because of how Macedonia, their home, is being affected.
These protests used to be held every single day at 6 o’clock p.m. and would make their way along a specific route throughout the city. As the months have gone by however, the protests have changed, and now seem to focus on more specific civil movements and do not occur as often as before. There are two reasons Zaneta said these protests are not occurring daily anymore. One reason is that it is now summertime and many people who were involved in the protests are away on holiday and are no longer in Skopje. The second reason is that it is exhausting to participate in protests such as these every single day. After a full day of work, then heading straight to the protests at 6p.m., by the time the protestors get home they just go to bed and repeat this process of work and protesting daily.
When we began this project we were under the assumption that these protests were still happening nightly. It wasn’t until we were already planning to go back to Macedonia that we were informed the protests had become less frequent. Without there being a protest, a lot of the images we were looking for to pair with the audio were impossible to get. After coming back and talking with Meredith, we’ve decided to begin a new project this final week we are here, and then use what we did get while we were in Macedonia to make a separate shorter project on the side. Stay tuned for more updates on our upcoming project focusing on a local community here in Pristina.
This weekend was hard. There is no other way that I can describe it. Malinda and I went to Skopje, Macedonia to tell the story of protests through the eyes of main protestors. In these protests, the people use paint as a way to show their defiance towards the government. We thought this was interesting and were hoping to focus our story on this aspect.
But that’s not what happened.
After contacting many people and not having a solid “yes” from anyone, the weekend came and we had already made arrangements to get to Skopje. Our plan was to target someone in the protest and talk to them. Little did we know that even protesters take a vacation.
After talking to Branimir Jovanovic, a 34 year old economic professor and avid protestor, we learned that the protests had been way too frequent before to keep up daily. With the summer here, many students went home or on holiday. The protests were taking place maybe once a week and that was when something provoked them.
Our story slipped through our fingers faster than we could get a grasp on it.
We had a solid interview from Branimir about his experience getting arrested during a protest. His view towards protests was that they should not be violent, which is the reason for using the paint. We have many images of what the buildings look like with the paint splattered on them, some people we talked to even thought it looked better that way.
Admittedly we were not as prepared as we could have been before going, but we felt the pressure of time closing in fast. We didn’t have any other ideas. We thought that if we cared enough about the story then magically it would all work out.
It didn’t work out and we failed. But that’s all part of life no matter what profession you are in. So when, not if, you fail, it is important to remember that nothing is a mistake if you can take away a lesson learned. I know now to be more prepared and to really think through the story before I start it. I need to have better contacts in place before starting the story.
I still had fun seeing the city and getting to “live” there for a few days. The paint looks oddly beautiful against the vibrant white statues.
But today is a new day and I am going to walk away from this experience with my head held high and not let it get me down. I have too much to do to be bogged down by this mistake, and I’ll only move forward from here.
My very first interview was like a week ago. At first I was very curios about my subject and the questions i was going to ask him. At first i had to convince him to do this project which i thought would be the hardest thing of the entire project but fortunately he was happy that some one is doing such thing and he accepted immediately.
We met with him the next day, he was a really nice person and he was willing to share his experiences with us and show the world what is like to be a transgender in Kosovo, what difficulties has he faced or he is facing and different things about his life. He has lot of stories to talk about, like good stories and bad stories.
why my title says “Lendi for short” is because one of the difficulties he faced while growing up was his name, in school teachers would call him in his long name which was Lendita and he didn’t like it. So today everyone calls him Lendi and for those who call him with the long name he says that he doesn’t care as long as they don’t do it on purpose or with bad intentions.
Tuesday of last week, I got to interview Arjona Morina for the newborns project with my partner Saddia Arjona is 16 year old girl who is still in high school but enjoys volunteering at an organization that assists people with down syndrome. After speaking with her it was apparent that she is extremely passionate with what she does and enjoys helping people very much. She has tremendous love for her friends that volunteer with her as friends with down syndrome whom she selflessly supports on a everyday basis.
She receives great happiness from what she does and is a very out going and optimistic person. She comes from a wealthy family with her father as a doctor, and mother as an engineer. Even though she lives her life at high standards, she can still feel the hardship that her people have to go through. She believes that because she is blessed, it is her duty to bless others. Such a mentality if were more common, would make the world we live in much more prosperous and less devastating.
The idea of walking up to a strangers house unannounced and asking them to interview and photograph them is something that gives me a great deal of anxiety. I imagine the scenario often, and I always picture me knocking on the door, explaining my project and politely asking their permission to photograph, and them rejecting it all and telling me to go away, leaving me with nothing to shoot. However, my experiences today were quite the opposite.
I visited three families today, and every one greeted me with open arms the minute I rang their doorbell. They were all very eager to help me with my project, and sat down, answering all my questions, and telling me loads of stories about their bees and the process of beekeeping and honey making. They even were kind enough to bring me snacks, and give me tours of their properties before letting me roam free around their yards. I was amazed that people here are so kind and generous, because I honestly feel like back home almost no one would have been as open and friendly to me as the people I met today.
“Skopje was not [a] beautiful town…but it was [an] authentic town.”
These words expressed by Zaneta Trajkoska, The Director of the Institute for Media in Macedonia, describe a general feeling that Macedonians have towards the newly built structures that stand tall in the city center of Skopje, Macedonia.
A statue of Alexander the Great, complete with a water fountain, overlooks the city. A closer look at the statue reveals something that wasn’t in the original plan for the statue; splashed of red paint . Citizens in protest launch paint balls at the government funded statues as well as at a select number of government buildings.
In what has become known as the Colorful Revolution, the people of Macedonia are displaying their anger towards the government in an artistic way. What started as a protest over leaked conversations secretly recorded by the government has come to represent a variety of problems facing their society. One of the bigger issues is trying to create fair elections and hold those who took part in governmental scandal accountable under the law.
These statues endure the brunt of the anger because they represent the government failing to act in the interest of its people. the citizens were shown a digital version of what the city would look like after the building, but were angry as they felt the statues were unnecessary and overly expensive. Without consent of the people, the government began building. Now, the people stand in solidarity to show that they have a voice that needs to be heard.
“It is not about that they are improving the quality of living, but they are just putting on ugly makeup,” said Trajkoska. “It’s completely ugly.”
Last Sunday a friend of mine from Morocco and I went to Janjeva, a little village approximately 20 km away from the district of Prishtina. A friend of us, who lives there invited us to visit Janjeva. Interesting about Janjeva is that there live 4 different ethnicity groups all together in that little old village; Albanians, Croatians, Serbs, and the Ashkali. The whole village was kind of separated in districts, there were parts of the village where only Albanians would live and other parts where Croatians live and so on. However, they would all meet in the “center” which had many little caffees, a little bakery and the Mosque and the Church. They all live peacefully together – I liked that.
Our friend showed us around. The houses in the village were old and small.
The highlight of this trip was Gaga.
Gaga is an old Croatian Lady who always lived in Janjeva. She allowed us to visit her in her own House, in which she had a beautiful Garden. Gaga told us about her life as a Croatian in Kosovo. She had a big family, but her children left Kosovo and went to Croatia. Today she lives with only one of her daughters in her beautiful House in Janjeva.
I enjoyed that Sunday a lot. 🙂
– Besiana Kajtazi
Interviewing people is so much fun! I actually never had the chance to really interview someone and ask them questions about their life and what they do, and what they care about… I really liked it.
After my interview with Bardh for the NewBorn Documentary I thought about how interesting it would be if I could interview even more people and get to know about their stories – because we all do have a story, don’t we?
First I was kind of excited about the interview, because I thought what if my questions are boring and his answers will be short, but I found out that that is impossible. Why am I saying that…? I just think that both parties, the interviewer and the interviewed person do the interview with the goal to speak out. Me as an interviewer will ask the questions that suit the story I want to tell and Bardh, in this case, as the interviewed person will tell his story because he wants people to know how he sees the world. I actually regretted that I didn’t take the Recording Equipment on the first day I met Bardh, because our conversation that day was so interesting and it just went on and on. We talked about everything.
This is exactly what I liked about the whole INTERVIEWING process; both sides are ready to speak up, to talk about the deep stuff and to share moments of truth with one another – which is not very common in today’s fast world in which we bore each other with SMALL TALKs, instead of talking about the “real” things.
There are so many stories… and I want to hear more of them. I am pretty sure this won’t be my last interview.
This week I finally had the chance to ask my questions! I met with my “NewBorn” person to do the interview. We actually discussed the topics of the interview earlier, which made it easier for both of us to focus on the main story we wanted to tell through the documentary. However, before it came to the FUN part, which was the interview for me, there was the process of preparation.
Firstly, I asked myself what exactly I want to show in the documentary of Bardh as a Youth Activist here in Prishtina, Kosovo. That’s why I thought it is a good idea to first meet with Bardh and get to know him – and yes, after our first meeting, in which Bardh told me a lot about his personal life but also about his activities as a youngster I had pretty much an idea of what the story of Bardh in this Newborn Documentary would be. Bardh was a very cooperative parner in this whole process with his own creative ideas he gave a lot of input in this first phase of the project.
The next step was the preparation of the Interview Questions. Since I had kind of the idea of how the story would be like, I had to think about adequate questions that support the story. This part was a little hard since I had to make sure that the questions connect and a “flow” is created, but I think I did a pretty good job on that.
The third step was to communicate to Bardh the main idea and ask him if we could get pictures of all those events he would talk about in the interview. Since there are not so many activities in Summer, it was kind of hard to get pictures of him in action while debating or at another movement he is part of, however, Bardh had some photos of those particular moments and we used them to supplement our Documentary with suitable pictures.
These were the 3 steps I had to take before doing the interview. I really liked working this way, but it was also necessary of course because I wanted to be ready and well prepared when I met Bardh for the Interview.