Collective residencies / The purple meridians / Olot
GEORGIA TSISMETZOGLOU
From Wednesday, 15 June 2022 to Friday, 17 June 2022
Bio
Born and currently based in Athens,Greece. In 2010 finished a Master in Creative Documentary at the University of Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona.
Have participated in several workshops and forums on creative documentary, video activism and new media technologies for interactive and transmedia storytelling. Collaborated in documentaries and collective projects in Greece and abroad. Currently working as a video editor.
Project
I participate in the project "The Purple Meridians", an international meeting with 16 female filmmakers from different countries (Catalonia, Kurdistan, Italy, Greece), to discuss the difficulties faced by professionals with a female identity and non-binary people in the film and audiovisual industry, to break down the borders they have encountered and to make proposals for improvement, creating a network of support and exchange for future collaborations on an axis that crosses that crosses whole of Europe, from its eastern to its western border.
It was the first encounter on a physical space for The Purple Meridians. So the first day we took time to know each other better, talk and share our audiovisual works and set a framework for the following days. The second and third day was an intensive workshop of discussions, debates on how we can find alternative ways for film production. The obstacles we face -that seems to be common- and see how we can strengthen each other to overcome those obstacles and lead to new ways of production.
A strong need to create more collaborative works outside the existing production framework had arose which led us to create working groups which will continue to work -on line- for the production of video essays that might lead to a collaborative feature film. Also we created group accounts to facilitate our direct communication in order to strengthen what we managed to build during the residency.
Our stay in the Residency of Olot has gave us the necessary space to debate on topics that though we come from different cultural backgrounds seems to have in common. Being able to meet in person was an amazing opportunity to connect on a level difficult to achieve on online sessions. The aspiration of meeting and interacting with such strong and creative women has broaden my perspective on how I would like to continue my work on audiovisual production through more collaborative channels.