HiLoVv - Hidden Live(r)s of Venice on Video

After two months of research-based script development about the "Hidden LIve(r)s of Venice", on November 21 2011 students from three universities and several countries met in the floating city to produce 6 short documentaries about Venice, its interesting professions and personalities..., all under the mentorship of the renowned film director, professor Rajko Grlić. The films were first shown at the end of the workshop with the presence of the portrayed persons at the University of Nova Gorica premises in Venice, at the ex Convento dei Servi di Maria, Sant’Elena, while the final versions premiered at the screening in Ljubljana within the University of Nova Gorica School of Arts semester show on January 10 2012. The films are now in finalization for distribution.

Photo gallery of the workshop in Venice

Photo gallery of the final screening with discussion in Ljubljana

Have a taste of our blogs from Venice (in Slovene):

Marija Laura describes the beggining of the adventure
Peter makes word&pic haikus in                                     Aqua Alta di Creativita
Anja makes a Hello and Goodbye from Venice
 

HiLoVv Project Background  

The (Erasmus Intensive) programme under the title"Hidden Live(r)s of Veniceon Video"(HiLoVV) intends to revive the invisible and peripheral actors and narratives of a seemingly decaying urban tissue – Venice. By discovering the city’s inner life through academic research and audio-visual representation of urban spaces, and through creative interactions with its everyday inhabitants, teachers and students are going to develop specific skills and knowledge within the interdisciplinary combined thematic areas of audiovisual techniques and (multi)media production, historical and (urban) archaeology, including cultural as well as social studies.

Besides giving a unique and novel intercultural and interdisciplinary academic experience to the primary users, the secondary-user-centred aim of the project is to eventually offer a "social catharsis through video" to the immediate (academic and non-academic) audiences by featuring the 5 films (as major creative outputs) on site, regionally, and perhaps even globally. Contrasting the “hi” and the “low” research and production paradigms – somewhat mirroring the two disparate layers of Venice’s social reality – the specific pedagogical objective is to develop the key competence of a future film artist or video producer: to focus on small people as filters (the “liver” metaphor!) and carriers of “hidden” narratives, discovering Venice (repeatedly anew) – or indeed any other “historically marked” urban space – as a living urban tissue, reaching far beyond a mere historical scenery, a tourist landmark or a cultural business setting. In a broader project objective, the IP is to present a strong case of research-based media-production didactics, with a strong public impact and an innovative interdisciplinary outreach and strong ICT-based (blended) approach.

The primary target groups of the programme include students, teachers and mentors, but also architects, urban sociologists, historians, conservators, and related (interdisciplinary oriented) scholars. Thesecondary target groups spread out onto all temporary as well as stationary urban inhabitants and “users” of Venice, as well as the regional and trans-regional (global) public, reached via the distribution of the produced films.The main activities of the programme revolve around the gradual (didactically dissected) process of filmic video-production, supported by analytic remote as well as on-site research (urban sociology, architecture and history) as well as including manifold interactions with local inhabitants and other “users” of the city. An important part of the project focuses around the dissemination activities covering on-site as well as trans-regional screenings and (exploitation-motivated) discussions, as well as fostering academic and non-academic (socially divergent) discourse on-site and on-line.

The main learning outcomes envision students to:
(specifically)
- learn to research and produce in realistic and site-specific media production setting
- master film and video production in blended (remotely connected) settings
- develop site-specific preproduction, production and postproduction methods and work-styles in the realm of film and video production
- develop a critical and (post)modern sociological perspective on cultural heritage, architecture and urbanism
(generally)
- develop interdisciplinary collaboration skills and team work ethics
- learn to creatively collaborate trans-disciplinary, trans-culturally and via ICT
- develop interdisciplinary competence in creative production settings
- develop intercultural and interdisciplinary discursive competence

Expected project outputs are:
> 5 items of 7-10 minute short films of significant conceptual and aesthetic value (at least 2 promoted to international festivals and platforms),
Supported by
  - 2 internal screenings on site (Venice)
  - 1 public screening on site (in Venice, with discussion)
  - 3 off-site screenings at partner universities (Graz, Rijeka, Ljubljana)
  - 3 international conference reports or presentations (at least one local)
  - 9 secondary screenings across the region (partner networks, festivals)
  - Intensive web dissemination (feature presentations ePlatform vsu.ung.si )
> new course curriculum, incl. complete instructional design and methodology
> teaching & learning materials compendium (paper & online materials)
> e-newsletter and press releases
> 3international conference reports or presentations
> a “Lessons Learned” report

Consortium partners:
School of Arts University of Nova Gorica
Academy of Applied Arts University of Rijeka
Contemporary Arts Institute, Architecture and Media Institute, Graz Technical University

Partners:
IAES - International Accademy of Environmental Sciences

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With the support of the Lifelong Learning, Erasmus, Programme of the European Union.

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