For the third month in a row, most of us are looking through the same window. Have you ever wondered what view others see through their windows every day? Maybe it is a forest, maybe a neighbour with a strange hobby, or maybe conscripts are on a drill in the barracks in the morning darkness? It could seem that nothing is happening, but at the same time a lot is happening – it depends on the chosen angle. The window has become yet another screen for us, and the annual media festival of the project “Big Small Screens” on a specially designed website http://www.menoavilys.org/dme invites you to share the view through your windows and see what others see through their own.
“Big Small Screens” is a media literacy project for Lithuanian schools and other educational institutions working with school-age youth. The project has been carried out for 5 years by the Media Education and Research Centre “Meno Avilys” together with the British Council in Lithuania. The media festival held at the end of each “season” annually invited project participants to meet live and discuss their experiences, however, this year it is not possible to do so due to quarantine, so one of the forms of the media festival became the “Behind every window – a new story” website which contains 150 motion picture postcards that students have filmed through their own windows.
The organizers are glad that the initiative went beyond the project and received the “postcards” not only from the project participants, but also from the people from various towns of Lithuania: Visaginas, Klaipeda, Paberžė, Baltoji Vokė, Kupiškis, Šiauliai, Kaunas, Gargždai, Kretinga, and others. The youngest participant is only six years old. We invite you to join us by shooting and creating motion picture postcards lasting up to 1 minute (turn your cameras so that the image is horizontal). Indicate your name and place of residence and email it to labas@didelimaziekranai.lt . We will upload the postcards to our virtual platform, where all the windows and their stories will open. Let’s hope the world manages to overcome the pandemic, and the stories you tell become a kind of a visual document of this unusual period.
Be bold and creative when creating moving postcards, experiment with styles, genres and forms. Don’t worry about the quality of the camera or other imperfections – perfection does not interest anyone! But remember one rule: if you’re filming people through a window, respect their right of image. Do not film people’s faces without their consent.
***
“Big Small Screens” is a fifth-year media literacy project of the Media Education and Research Centre “Meno Avilys” and the British Council for Lithuanian schools and other educational institutions working with school-age youth. The project is part of the British Council’s People to People cultural communication programme in all three Baltic countries. The project is partly funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture.
The project aims to develop media literacy skills of Lithuanian youth and youth educators, to discover and research their community, and foster a dialogue with others through creative and analytical media literacy activities. Particular attention is paid to audiovisual media and media products that are appealing to students (films, advertisements, computer games, social networks, TV shows and series, multimedia journalism).