Experimental Documentary GLE Course 2026

This week has been our most productive so far, as our team finalized the plans for the film and began the production process. Seeing our concept transformed into tangible footage has been particularly exciting. While the filming process inevitably brings out unexpected ideas, our footage overall represents our individual struggles to find belonging within a world of constant travel and movement. One concept that has also emerged since we began production is how physical differences in our footage, whether shaped by the weather on the day of filming, the type of camera used, or each person’s individual style, highlight the ways we each experience belonging differently. Because our audio consists of a conversation among the four of us, it has been especially interesting to see how our visual shots also begin to form a kind of dialogue with one another. Similarly, the TED Talk on vulnerability raised an interesting point in terms of our project concept. As Brene Brown discusses, when peo...

This week our team came together creatively to collaborate and finalize our idea for our project. We solidified the idea of exploring home and belonging through questioning how these factors can be constructed and weaponized. For example, when does protection become an exclusion? Why does removal feel like tidying up? When a nation imagines itself as a home, the language of protection and belonging begins to shape who is welcomed inside, and who is asked to leave. Since we are sharing these ideas from two different countries, it opened up a conversation about the similarities between our countries and the struggles that people who are labeled "outsiders" face. Using these comparisons, we came up with ideas on what shots to get to elevate our main idea. Our group has a great variety of skills, so we are able to take on these topics and even explore media in other languages like Czech and Spanish. We met outside of class on Sunday to talk about the types of media we would all ...

This week, the five of us nailed down our concept for our project. We want to explore the ways that architecture and urban planning/design imply who is and is not welcome in a space – even if that space is a completely public one. Benches that you can’t comfortably stay on, indoor bus stops that are only open certain hours, ramps that are too steep, all of these details contribute to messaging about who belongs where. Inaccessibility and anti-homeless ideology are global problems in urban planning, and we want to explore that in our project. We met up to talk about how we want the project to look and sound, and since this is an experimental project, we want to delve into smaller visual details. We can use archival sound to highlight the dissonance between an object or building’s intended purpose vs. the new purpose it is given by being made inaccessible to certain groups of people. Since footage will need to be captured in both Chicago and Brno, we want to play with how we can mix thos...

This week, we met again on Thursday morning/at noon. Our discussion followed a structure similar to last week’s, mainly focusing on our experiences with traveling and how we think about the concept of belonging. We discussed where we are from, what memories do these places hold and how they compare to where we study. We touched on the idea that both Brno and Chicago are cities with strong identities. We all shared stories about the places where we felt like home even though it was only for a short period of time. Especially memorable was Stevie’s short stay in New Zealand, Auckland. Although we focused mainly on the good sides, both Stevie and Peter mentioned a few places that made them partially disappointed, mainly by not being able to connect with people. We all eventually agreed that the feeling of “belonging somewhere” is very closely tied to the people you talk with and the community you create or are part of and that it's important to have a home base to return to. Then we...

This week we continued refining our ideas for the project, focusing on how to structure the film to best support our themes. We discussed cinematography, sound, and editing strategies, and explored ways to create a seamless edit despite shooting in four different locations. By the end of the week, we finalized our shot list to guide each of us as we film our individual segments and developed a shared set of interview questions that we will all use.

This week, we came up with the foundation of our experimental documentary. We built a concept around researching a certain community through the perception of home. We made a google doc as well to write down any potential ideas within the group, as well as assigned our roles, tagged all of our information, and started looking into specific communities. We really want to find a community that not only can we in Chicago go out and film and experience, but also our partner in Brno to be able to go to a similar community with Czech Republic and document it to add more depth to our film. Personally, I view the local hardcore/punk scene in Chicago to be my home. Between filming shows, music videos, running radio, helping book shows, etc. I have made a core amount of friends at these shows and find them to be my home. Exploring this would be cool to research the start of certain venues and their history as well as filming avant garde scenes within these spaces.