THE RE-FUTURE PROJECT AT THE TEDXROMA SALON
Rome – On Saturday the 15th September at MAXXI – National Museum of the Arts of the XXI Century – starting from 2 pm, there will be the TEDxRomaSalon event that will see, in a Relay Race format, other six Italian and European cities connected around the issue of “Porous Borders”.
Among the speakers there will be Camilla Paternò (screenwriter and producer) who will speak about the experience of the European project, "Re-Future", a workshop image education and visual storytelling devoted to unaccompanied migrating minors that, after a year of work, led to the realization of the documentary, “Tumarankè”.
The project – co-funded by the EU Creative Europe Program – was born from a partnership among several European institutions: Dugong Films (Italy), International Telematic University UNINETTUNO (Italy), AccoglieRete (Italy), Infinity Edge (Italy), Picofilms (France), Shoot&Post (Sweden), Asi Film (Turkey) and Road Movie (Italy).
In the course of this event, international speakers, one after the other, will take the floor to tell about their impressions and experiences as regards the complex and global issue of those “porous borders” that everyday thousands of people are forced to cross, thus becoming the refugees or immigrants of our times. Actually, today we are witnessing the biggest stream of people mobility causing forced displaced people and illegal migrations, complex challenges to be met for the entire world: thousands of people, women, men, children dying in their attempt to reach our shores, of going behind walls and ditches amid general indifference.
The experience of integration, born from the Re-Future” Project and the idea on which the "Tumaranké” documentary is based will be the protagonists of the speech delivered by Camilla Paternò.
Is it possible to transform your mobile phone into a tool that promotes integration?
This film is the result of the videos realized in a year by the very young participants with their smartphones, who learn, step by step, how to use this device in a more informed way. This is how the first personal and surprising diary that, in personal way, tells about the migration experience of these youths: a cutaway of their life in Italy, of their life in the hosting community, of school, dreams and also of their weaknesses and times of loneliness, of their longing for home and people now far away. Getting to know them more closely, while, overcoming many difficulties, they try to fit in a new country and to learn a new language, it becomes apparent that a culture of inclusion is possible, if today we lay the foundations for a shared future.
Here is a passage drawn from Camilla Paterno’s speech:
“Telling a story: the one who succeed in doing so miraculously gets out from anonymity. As long as he does not tell his story, he will still be an immigrant and nothing more. A being without identity, except that of an exile. (…) Most of the people who every week arrive in the European shores escape from areas of war, hunger; they practically lost everything; in some cases they have no shoes; however, they nearly always have a smartphone with them. Their smartphone is not only a means to communicate; their smartphone is the means that everybody uses to tell about himself. (…) These young people may find it difficult to express themselves by words, but they are the “Millennials” and as many of us, they share their stories through their smartphones, thanks to videos, photographs and social media. The only thing is to teach them how to organize them, how to structure them through a language (…). Transforming a mobile phone into a means of integration”.