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Call to Bolombia (Comenius 3 project) |
| Type: |
Summary |
| Contributed by: |
Dani Fernández and Marc Planagumà (GRAMC) |
"Call to Bolombia" is the proposal of a film where reality and fiction are mixed together.
This project is carried out by GRAMC and the University of Girona.
CALL TO BOLOMBIA
(proposal of a film where reality and fiction melt)
Hi, my name’s Idoia. I was born in Madrid eleven years ago. My parents are from Bolivia. We just have moved to Olot, in the north of Catalunya (Spain). Still don’t know many people here, but I have a good friend: he works on a telephone booth, and he lets me be with him when I finish school. Many people go there to phone home, which is always far from here.
At school, my companions never remember that my parents are from Bolivia, they say they come from Colombia. I am tired of correcting them, so from now on I will tell them that I come from Bolombia.
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The telephone booths are the only places where all the immigrants go to. The phone booths keep the hopes, the fears, the melancholy and the struggle of men and women who arrive in Europe with the hope of a better life. We have chosen this space where we will meet with some of these people, and try to understand what’s going on in the head and the heart of them.
“Call Bolombia” has its background in Olot, Girona (Spain), a small town of 30.000 people, where the immigration reaches the 10% of the total population. A telephone booth will be the scenario where different vital stories of immigrants will cross and meet.
We propose a film where reality and fiction melt:
There will be three micro-stories with their real protagonists, who always go to the phone booths to tell how the story of their lifes is developing.
Idoia is the main character of the film. She represents a pre-adolescent girl who is a “second generation” (daughter of an immigrant couple, born in Spain). She always goes to the telephone booth and makes a call to Bolombia, an imaginary country where the diversity is perfect (everyone is equal in the difference), and she is always answered by someone with a different origin. She acts as a “mirror” of the new society which she’s in, telling through the phone how Catalans in particular (and the European society in general) are like.
She has visual contact with the protagonists of the three real stories. She sees how they come in, calls home giving news, and goes again. She’s the silent witness, the girl who is not noticed by anyone, but knows what’s going on.
The three chosen micro-stories are:
- Family re-joining: We have chosen the Moroccan collective to tell the story of how a family re-unites in Olot after the head of the family has come first, and all the problems that this situation brings into play.
- Keeping the memory and the roots: the sub-Saharan collective (Gambians, Senegalese) treasure their memory as Africans. Back home, they have their oral tradition and memory kept by the griots, a figure who is trained to remember and tell the stories and the ethic values which makes them Africans. In Europe we find also griots, who are traveling across Europe visiting the different sub-Saharan communities, and telling the story and the mythology of their roots. Baba Kone is one of these griots, and we want him to come to Olot and then reflect this essential cultural role interacting with the local black African collective.
- Exile due to social-political reasons: Luis is from Colombia. He’s 25 years old. He had to disappear from Bogota when his family was threatened by a gang of narcos: he was obliged, by the social and economical situation in his country, to joint the gang and work as a gunman for them. The situation was getting rough, and he was obliged to commit more. He didn’t want that, but the gang wanted to put pressure over him threatening his family. He had to leave the country, and start a new life far from home.
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