Ellen Valter (University of Toronto)
The urgent need to preserve the A-generation stories, those DPs who were born in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and fled 80 years ago this fall upon the return of Soviet terror in short-form portrait documentaries was the objective to be met by the FILMIST Stuudio pilot project, which paired high school students from Toronto and Tallinn, together with supportive professional industry faculty, with one such A-generation person. After research and interview instruction, the students drew out the A-generation participant’s story of escape which was told through their then-childlike eyes, including through the prop of an item what they brought along with them on the escape journey. Through production of the 3-minute films, 12-18-year-olds learned of our collective history and owned the stories through the video production process, resulting in broadcast-quality production.
The presentation walks through the practical aspects of collecting these stories in a school break production format for high school students (a tricky population!), ensuring that both long form interviews and audio-visual portrait pieces find preservation, the latter of which can better align with a faster paced or bite sized experience as interstitials or into museum exhibition. Samples of the output are here and here.