Back in Holland

It’s been a while since my last blog post about our project from Namibia. In the previous one I was still in Gobabis. Meanwhile I’ve been back since the 4th of september and I’ve recently graduated with the documentary we shot in the town of Gobabis in Namibia.

In the video link below you can check out the teaser I made of our film.

The symposium

The film was shot to be shown at a symposium by the municipality of Smallingerland about Development Aid and about the ‘twinning’ between Smallingerland and Gobabis. The purpose was to start up discussion by showing the film, about both the twinning and Development Aid.

Bert Middel, mayor of Smallingerland

The symposium was a succes! Allthough personally I was very dissapointed that the mayor Bert Middel did not like the film simply because he had been told or thought so himself that the film would show all the great things that Smallingerland had done for the twinning and Development Aid. This however, was not our assignment. Making a promtion film was not the goal. If that is what they actually wanted they should have said so and they should have sent two first year students who they can grab by the arm and tell them what to do and exactly how to do it, but not two grad students that are willing to take the assignment seriously and actually talk with the people in town and in the slums to create an honest point of view. The assignment in fact was to give an overall view – from a new perspective – (Jelmer and I are fairly new to the whole Development Aid scene) on things and to tell a clear and honest story of what went wrong and what went well between the twinning and Development Aid in general, and tell something about future perspective et cetera.. The mayor was very dissapointed about the story we had told with our film.. Apparently a dishonest film is more appriciated than an honest one.. That’s life. In bureaucratic ‘lies’ become a policy.

Graduation presentation

On wednesday the first of december there will be a presentation at the NHL University of Applied Sciences at 19:30 and afterwords we will show the film. There will be snacks, coffee and thea and everyone who would like to come is more than welcome!

Hope you enjoyed the teaser, have a look at Jelmer’s one below (we both made teasers seperately).

On the second of july 2010 I’ll be flying with fellow CMD student Jelmer de Jong towards the second least densely populated country in the world which also happens to be one of the driest continents on the planet. This country is positioned above South Africa and is called Namibia.

Personal Reason

We were asked by a teacher at our faculty to make a film in Nambia. Jelmer and I were both still looking for suitable graduation film subjects, and this subject (which will be explained below) touched us both. So we decided to do some research, meet some people and take the job!

Purpose

For the last 15 years the Namibian municipality of Goababis and the Dutch municipality of Smallingerland have had a fellowship that is connected by development aid. Several projects have been set out in Gobabis for the last 15 years such as HIV/AIDS prevention, housing projects and many more.

The municipality of Smallingerland wants us to make a film about the last 15 years of development aid that has been brought to Goababis. They want to know how things are going today. So in short: what’s going great and what could be better?

They want us to shoot from our perspective – from a new way to look at the whole piece – and also with an eye to the future.

Symposium

The film will be played in october on an international symposium in Drachten which obviously is about development aid. the film is set to inform and create a discussion between the people at the symposium to create steps for the future.

On the 4th of september we’ll be back in Holland. I’ll try and post as many text and video blogs as I can about the proces, but it will be hard staying online where we are. I’ll also need a USB device so that I can connect my MacBook Pro with a telephone based internet connection but so far I haven’t been able to find one yet, not even the Mac Store.

More news coming soon, about the pre-production, the production and the post-production.

]]> http://www.jaapruurd.com/journal/index.php/2010/06/25/namibia-part-1/feed/ 5 http://www.jaapruurd.com/journal/index.php/2010/02/18/back-in-holland/ http://www.jaapruurd.com/journal/index.php/2010/02/18/back-in-holland/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:57:30 +0000 Jaap Ruurd Feitsma http://www.jaapruurd.com/journal/?p=896

On december the 29th I flew back to The Netherlands from Lisbon, Portugal. My internship at CheckTheGate had come to an end. After very nice goodbyes with both company CheckTheGate and other people that I’ve met over the past 4 months that I was there, I was packed and ready to go back home to work on my graduation project.

I’ve decided to make a documentary and at this point I have several options, both local and abroad. The most important thing for me right now is to find a place to put the film. What I mean with that is that I need an institution, a channel or a website that’s interested in what I would like to make and possibly, if necessary willing to finance it. In the upcoming posts I’ll write about the various subjects and options that I have at hand.

I would also like to use this blogpost to share some of the pictures on the filmset I worked on for the NGOL Commercial in Lisbon for CheckTheGate.

The first part included a great shot of a crab filmed from a very low perspective. The camera would move intirely to the right, making its way around the crab. The shot made the crab look like 15 foot high, something out of a Stephen King novel almost. But in this case it wasn’t a fictional horror creature, but a real one..

The documentary, in a way, was a little bit like the great BBC production ‘Earth’ but in my point of view even more stunning than Earth already was! If you missed it, have a look at a short piece of the making off and the final shot that came in the beginning of the film in this journal post. Watch it on HD quality to fully appreciate the shots. Personally I hope they will bring out a DVD with both parts of the documentary. A must have!