Group Five #1

On Thursday morning, our team met on zoom to brainstorm our documentary, re-introduce ourselves, and bounce ideas around face-to-face. Instead of trying to force a concept for the film, we started by talking about our shared experiences as young adults and college students preparing for the future. Despite coming from different backgrounds, regions, and countries, we found common ground, with each of us expressing a strong desire to travel, explore multiple careers and passions, and avoid being confined to a single life path. At the same time, we also all admitted to craving stability, and fearing the uncertainty that comes with endless possibility. Our contradictory relationships to freedom and security became a recurring topic in our conversation, and at one point, Kryštof asked whether any of us “felt trapped.” We acknowledged that we’ve all felt frustration with the current political climate in our respective countries and have imagined moving or spending extended time abroad. Ultimately, this conversation proved central to our documentary concept: capturing the tension between our eagerness to explore the world and the accompanying anxiety over whether we will find belonging amid a transient lifestyle. In exploring these themes of restlessness, belonging, and the complicated emotions that come with imagining a future elsewhere, Chapter 2 of “Home” is especially relevant. Describing home as a site of “history and memory,” Blunt and Dowling’s discussion of ethnography particularly resonates with our project concept. They write, “To engage a group’s lived experience is to engage its full sensuality — the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations that bring a way of life to life.” (Herbert at qtd. in Blunt and Dowling, 42) As we refine our documentary idea, we have to consider how to capture belonging and the absence of it through subjective imagery and sound. By considering all aspects of our daily lives important to the research process, it may allow us to better translate our internal anxieties into a visual language. Likewise, Blunt and Dowling also note that ethnography “can be conducted in different places and cultures or close to home.” (42) This feels especially relevant, as the conflict we’re exploring doesn’t have to be filmed only in obvious settings like graduation ceremonies, university locations, political media, etc. Determining how to document belonging and its absence through ambient noise, fragmented spaces, or transitional environments is an exciting next step in the project process. Besides our arrival at a solid concept for the film, our first group meeting was also shaped by open-ended questions and active listening, demonstrating how connection and understanding can develop across cultural and national borders.