We are students and instructors working across two universities—Masaryk University (Brno, Czechia) and DePaul University (Chicago, USA)—in a shared Global Learning Experience. Over the coming weeks, mixed international teams will collaborate to create short non-fiction films in an experimental documentary spirit.
Our topic for this iteration is BELONGING.
Not belonging as a slogan, but as a lived texture: in public spaces, in institutions, in routines, in language, in neighborhoods, in what feels “normal,” and in what suddenly doesn’t. We’re interested in the small social moments that reveal larger structures—how culture, history, and values show up in everyday life.
This is not only a filmmaking project. It’s also an intercultural exchange built into the work itself. “Experimental” can mean different things in different contexts; so can documentary ethics, authorship, and what respectful representation looks like. Part of our task is to learn those differences—without flattening them—and to translate them into creative decisions we can stand behind.
What will happen here
Each week, every team will publish one public post—short, readable, and reflective. Think of these posts as field notes + small essays: a record of how the project is evolving and how our understanding of belonging changes when we compare Brno and Chicago.
If this blog does its job, it won’t produce one clean definition of belonging. Instead, it will show belonging as something we test, misread, learn, and sometimes repair—together.
Welcome in!
If you’re reading from outside the course: welcome. You don’t need to know our syllabus to follow along. Just start with the question we’re starting with:
Where am I—and what does that question reveal about belonging?
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...
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