Asylum Seekers Resource Centre training

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre media training 3 2013 September - Melbourne VIC

The Change Media team ran the final collaborative workshop in Melbourne with members and volunteers from the ASRC (Asylum Seeker Resource Centre). The 1-day workshop, focused on handover of a broadcast quality camera for the ASRC, to enable their members to produce their own creative myth busting videos and community campaign films.

The workshop forms part of an ongoing two year collaborative effort to debunk the myths surrounding asylum seekers and to create powerful media messages for TV, internet and/or video projection art. The Change Media team will skill up members and volunteers at the ASRC, to support them to create a self sustaining media hub as a resource for asylum seekers to have a voice in the digital age.

During the handover workshop, participants trained on their new camera and media literacy skill to enable them to transfer their stories into screen language.
This workshop conceded a successful 2-year co-creative process to support asylum seekers in Australia. The ASRC community media team now has their own iMac media hub with broadcast quality camera and all skills necessary to commence their own artistic work.

Big thanks to the Australian Nurses Federation for the use of their fabulous venue!

Partners

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre

Australia Council for the Arts Creative Community Partnership Initiative

OurCommunity

Tallstoreez Productionz

Victorian College for the Arts Centre for Cultural Partnerships

The Perfect Refugee - Theatre Games

2011 May - Carclew SA

Change Media worked with acclaimed director, actor, filmmaker and social animateur,  Shahin Shafaei, and 18 young migrants, to create new work as part of a long term project. The forum theater workshop ran over 4 days, using mixed theater and acting techniques with digital media skills, to prepare for a 3-year multi-arts project , The Perfect Refugee.

Find below the resulting 20 Forum Theatre Game examples:

Leading Noises

Leading Hands

Blind Buses

Bears and Tree Planters

The Plate

The Talking Ring

Human Bowling Alley

Energy Ball

West Side Story

Sword Leader

Images of a Struggle

Sculpting

Blind Sculpting

The Protector

Fox and Rabbit

Blind Cars Trust Game

Clapping in Time

Boxing

Glass Bottle

Forum Theatre Games Showreel

This Change Media project aims to build the creative foundations for an exciting and innovative collaboration with young migrants and Bell Shakespeare in South Australia. The training covered forum theater, image creation and screen narratives, storytelling, interview and reenactment techniques and documentary shooting. The team also recorded some of the behind-the-scenes documentations.

We were excited to work with Shahin Shafaei [Through the Wires; From Bagdad to the Burbs] to kick start our newest creative challenge for the community arts and cultural development sector – to create high profile work that bring mainstream art and marginalized communities together to explore the ruptures of our society and our mythologies around refugees, racism and integration through a classical lens: Shakespeare In Times Of Crisis – The Perfect Refugee…

Partners

Arts SA Partnerships for Healthy Communities

Australia Council for the Arts

Australian Refugee Association Inc

Victorian College for the Arts Centre for Cultural Partnerships

Culture Shock - Aus Refugee Association

Australian Refugee Association - media training - 2010 March - Australian Refugee Association SA

Change Media worked with 15 new arrivals and young refugees as well as ARA / Pt. Adelaide Council staff over 4 days, to train them in film narratives, interview techniques and digital media skills. They created ‘Culture Shock’, a peer-produced, satirical documentary about their lives and the challenges of coming to Australia: Culture Shock

The training covered an introduction to screen narratives, file management and interview & reenactment techniques, documentary shooting and Final Cut editing skills. After an involved debate about the many issues faced by young refugees, the team (comprising of 15 young people from Kongo, Sudan, Bhutan, Belarus, Tanzania and Burundi) decided to use a mix of fun and serious examples of situations they were faced with as new arrivals. The team also created the original soundtrack in Garageband and recorded most of the behind-the-scenes documentations and individual interviews.

Bikram

AJ

Bunam

Damber

Devi

Graick

Kangimo

Maxim

Chris

Peter

Priyanka

Culture Shock

The team managed to create engaging stories that raise awareness about issues faced by young refugees living in the Port Adelaide Enfield district and wider Adelaide area. The participants hadn’t worked as a team were able to produce one film together; everybody conducted several shoots, interviews and took part in the edit and music production. By the end of Day 4 the team finished a rough cut of a funny and engaging documentary about appropriate / inappropriate behaviors and other challenges. The whole team agreed on the changes they wanted for the fine cut, for the Change Media team to clean up the edit, add title cards and insert the participants self-made music. We have already been approached by ARA to conduct another project soon, as the participants are keen to build on their new skills.

The workshop was a fantastic introduction to a longer term project planned for 2010-11, to create a social archive and reference video manual for new arrivals to Australia, to enhance cross-cultural understanding and mutual respect. Besides the fantastic 14min film, this DVD also includes rough cut interviews by the participants, which showcase their experiences as new arrivals and demonstrate not only their skills, but also their resilience surviving often horrific journeys. Again, a huge applause to the team – it was a very rewarding collaboration for our trainer team.

Partners

Apple

Arts SA Partnerships for Healthy Communities

Australia Council for the Arts

Australian Refugee Association Inc

City of Port Adelaide Enfield

Holiday Camp - anti-racist documentary

2min trailer + 50min documentary 2002 July - Woomera SA

A confronting 1-hour documentary about refugee policy in Australia, translated into 8 languages and sold into multiple territories globally since 2002.

The pivotal action of the documentary is the 2002 Woomera refugee prison outbreak – after months of protests, including hunger strikes, 53 refugees escape during the Easter protest, supported by hundreds of outraged Australians.
After witnessing the outbreak the audience is invited to consider the complex issues arising from this border crossing; in particular the diversity of constructions about protest and activism.

Holiday Camp (Adelaide/Hamburg 2002) investigates the current Australian immigration policies, in the context of 200 years of colonization, connecting the issues of indigenous dispossession, genocide, and the incarceration of refugees.

It explores the implications of the mandatory detention system and the construction of national borders. ‘Holiday Camp’ challenges us to consider what risks do we take…

Holiday Camp -  how is your liberation bound up with mine?

The film screened in over 300 festivals and events around the world.
Selected screenings:

• Documentary Film Festival Cairns, Australia, (July 2005)

• SHURIFF (Seoul Human Rights Film Festival), South Korea (21-26 May 2004)

• World Social Forum Film Festival, Mumbai, India (16-21 January 2004)

• DOCOMANIA, New Plymouth, New Zealand, (7+8 November 2003)

• WildSpaces Film Festival, 30 cites around Australia (1-3 August 03)

• Sehsuechte03, International Students Film Festival, Berlin-Potsdam, (4 May 03)

• Transmediale03, Berlin, Germany (4 February 03)

• CounterConference Toronto, Canada (6 April 03)

• 2nd European PGA-conference, Leiden, Netherlands (1-4 September 02),

• Borderpanic Symposium, Sydney, Australia (11 September 02)

• Electro Fringe, Newcastle, Australia (3 October 02)

• Straight out of Brisbane (19 November 02)

• Channel 31 Sydney and Melbourne (November 02)

• European no-border-camp-campaign – convergences in Strasbourg, France (19- 30 July 02)

• Jena, Germany (25-30 June 02)

Unknown Germany - experimental theatre tour

Unknown Germany (Unbekanntes Deutschland) - 1999-2001 Germany/ Spain / USA

Unknown Germany is an experimental performance installation, combining theatre, clandestine actors, audience provocations with multimedia projection, elctropunk and absurdist dance event.

This multi-modal work is based on sculptural component made from several bags of wet clothing and shoes discarded by refugees crossing the Straits of Gibraltar from Marocco and recovered and recontextualised by Carl and Gesine on Spain’s southern beaches near Tarifa, Andalusia, in 1999. The overall show tells a story about Fortress Europe, racism, whiteness and sexualised violence and its underlying normalised role models.

In a tour de force it pushes the audience to relinquish their shoes, essentially taking them hostage, mixing their belongings with those found on the beach and hoisting them above their heads - a promise and a threat.

A hidden provocateur half way through the show challenges the performers to stop the show and come clean on their white supremacist privilege - the audience is forced to take sides, the hall lights coming on turning their seats into the stage…will they decide for the show to continue or will they shut it down?

In each performance somehow the show continues, carrying the audience’s pity into a runway modeling refugee clothing. Borders are being crossed, in internalised escape and real refuge, a fitted kitchen explodes in a parody of pornographic phantasies, problem zones on body surfaces and in-and-exclusion are being meticulously examined. Audience are advised to avoid the front rows.

Unknown Germany toured six cities in northern Germany in summer 2001, with 6 sold-out shows. An excerpt of the show was performed in Bowling Green, Ohio, USA, at the national underground publishing conference.

hydrax productions presents:

Writers and Artistic Directors - Gesine Knuth and Carl Kuddell

Creative Producer - Carl Kuddell

Lights - Sabine Schmidt

Performers - Gesine Knuth, Carl Kuddell, Carla Interceptor (then know as Björn)

Music and DJ - Ulli Bomans (Schieres, Gladbeck City Bombing - https://gladbeckcitybombing.org)

Support - Rasmus Eulenberger, Andreas Kleemann

Video - Martina