Experimental Documentary GLE Course 2026

We have reached the end of our project and are quite happy with the shape it has taken. Brady’s idea to overlay disembodied arms and legs over some of our footage added an interesting layer to our message that we all enjoyed. It’s been very interesting to work together and learn from each other; if only we could have visited each other’s cities during this project! Our director, Rebeka, describes our finished piece as “A captivating collage of how it feels for bodies to move through public space. Strikingly hypnotic, delightfully odd, and seamlessly narrated.” It is my hope as I write this that we will be able to work together again, and perhaps even visit each other someday in the future. What an interesting experience to collaborate on a film from across the globe. – Lily Bacon, Producer

During this week, we worked on the final touches of our film. We added more visual footage and effects and the recordings from our interviews. What we found fascinating was the differences in how we went on about the interviews –in terms of wether it was in person or by phone, or how formal the setting and our family member was. Not only did it add diversity to our film, the latter also made us realise the differences - cultural or not – in how our families spoke and acted to express themselves in a way the felt most comfortable - or at home - to talk about the topic of belonging and home.

This week we got quite busy working on the rough cut of our film. We worked out a way around our different schedules and different time zones and planned out the technicalities, then went out to film details in urban design of Chicago and Brno that seem hostile or uninviting. Going location scouting and filming, we explored how we felt in those areas, which brought us one step closer to our theme. The rough cut left us all excited and motivated, as it reflected nicely the direction we wanted to move in. Looking forward, we will now be discussing the cut and how we want to polish it, and applying the feedback we will soon receive in class. After settling on the next steps, we will plan them out, from now on also counting in the change in daylight savings in the US. This proccess should take us to the final edit, presented in next week’s class.

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...