A project by Janna Lichter & Laura Oldörp
University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf
with Prof. Anja Vormann
In the Kibbutz Sde Boker »field of the shepherds«, the project creates an open film lab discussing gender related discourses and experiences with a group of Israeli and German students, researchers and local residents. The overall goal is to create and design an open process in order to make a movie together discussing collective and individual experiences on gender topics.
A Kibbutz supports collective actions which became the engine of our project “Fields of Dialoges”. Equality between women and men was part of the collective thinking and leads us to the questions what current discourses about gender roles and personal experiences of the participants are.
Fields of Moving-Images
On site we come together with the group of Israeli and German students, researchers and local residents around Sde Boker, to come together, share, talk and film. An Open Film Lab is created in the process producing new spaces of dialogues around the topic of gender.
The created digital fields of thought in advance include collected and visualized screening, ideas and common experiences are the basis for our Open Film Lab and the on-site workshops. During the excursion we further elaborate our first ideas and deconstruct our concepts of gender. Filming and documenting our project helps us to reflect and visualize our processes. The overall goal is to achieve understanding of each participant and share the results with interested local residents.
Our Open Film Lab is an experiment of coming together, discussing gender roles and trying to manage different tasks in the frame of Kibbuz communal thinking. The focus is on a safe space and a mixture between the relationship of the group and the individual in order to open up new constructs of gender and identity for each participant.
Fields of Methods and Process
Important for us is the reflection and transparency of the camera work. The interviews and film concepts will be planned together with the participants. Everyone will be enabled to film, interview and record. Including layers of dialoges, portraits, landscape and reflection. The goal is to authorize everyone as the author of the project. As well as we want to include performative moments in our processes.
1. Camera Workshop. Here we will introduce ourselves and the technical equipment to the group. Together we will do small exercises which authorizes everyone to film. We ask the questions: What do we see? Which technique are we using? When do we record?
2. Cooking Workshop. In order to get to know each other and to find a common language – we discuss and cook the dish together. During this moment everyone will film and record. We will only document what we as a group consider personally relevant and important.
3. Kibbuz Activity. During this period we will talk and document practices of us inside and outside of the Kibbuz such as swimming in the local pool, a tour to the cactus garden, a visit at Ben-Gurion’s Home, a trip to the desert etc.
4. Reflexion Walk. The walk will be hold in groups of small groups. Together we will walk to a chosen location where we will pause and ask specific questions which we chose in the process.At the end of the project we will reflect and start working on the post-production.
