DCSIMG Utopia.doc ARTIST OF THE CITY 2018

Utopia.doc

By Christiane Jatahy

TEMPS D’ IMAGES IN CINEMA IDEAL
8th – 15th November
schedule to be confirmed

Utopia.doc is a political report about the world we live in today. About migratory movements. About being foreign or about wanting to leave, to break away – in reality and fiction. About cultural, geographical and human borders. The project came about as part of the research carried out for the performance/film What if They Went to Moscow? And it was produced in 2013 in three big urban centres: Paris, Frankfurt and Sao Paulo. In each of these cities, the project was built from different components, but in all of them the premise was the same: film encounters in the homes of the participants. The participants were selected in different cities through interviews or from letters in which they answered the following questions:

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your story
2. Describe your home.
3. Why do you want to open your home to a stranger?
4. What is your utopia?
5. Is there a somewhere in the world right now where you would like to be?
6. Describe a daydream that you have.
7. Tell us about a dream you’ve had while sleeping.

In the three cities, the film’s participants came from all corners of the globe: Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, Congo, Russia, India, Japan, Colombia, England, France, Algeria, Switzerland, Haiti, Germany, Brazil. In Paris, artists created performances in response to the letters and performed them in the homes of the participating immigrants. In Frankfurt, those who responded to the letters were important writers of Brazilian literature, who wrote original texts which they read in the homes of the people who had written the letters that inspired them. In Sao Paulo, the immigrants themselves responded to the letters of other immigrants. In each place the encounters between people, who saw each other for the first time in one of their houses, generated profound and emotional conversations about personal stories and about today’s world.
The documentary shows this journey through homes, through encounters, through memories and creations, in a kind of utopia of a world without borders.