Albania

The beginning of the Albanian feminist movement in the early XX century was relatively late compared to other western developed countries. The name of the movie refers to the first society of women, called “Morning Star”, was founded in January 1909, by the Sevasti and Parashqevi Qiriazi. This short movie refers to the spatial narrations, messages in public spaces which often unconsciously and imperceptibly preserve patriarchal patterns. In Tirana, a city where there is relatively more freedom and openness to individuality, compared to the towns and villages of Albania, statues of male heroes dominate anyway. The only female statue that has been inaugurated in 2022, is the statue of Queen Geraldine, as wife of King Zogu. The role of women in history, their importance for the development of the country and it's culture must be redefined and make visible in the public space. The project refers to urban anthropology, but also to the relations of power shaped in the landscape. We admire (in ALbania) the beautiful views, the mountains, forgetting about the situation of women there, forgetting that in small towns, in and behind mountain villages in Albania, there are still many women whose rights to decide about themselves are not respected. And, in terms of land, typical and common here, they cannot inherit a family's land inheritance.

Albania

A short film created as a spontaneous action of inclusion of a local taxi driver into the conversation of foreign passengers, three friends. Although we didn’t speak the same language as him, in this short moment in time we let the music he likes become our way of silent communication with him. The simultaneous scenes of walking along the labyrinth of meander lines, drawn on the floor of Rruga Sermedin Said Toptani, symbolize the complex paths of interpersonal relations between strangers. While I was staying in Tirana I had a strong feeling of empathy towards older, local people. I saw that often they don’t speak any foreign languages, while at the same time, because of economic challenges Albanian people face, they are “forced to” work with tourists. As Tirana is rapidly growing and changing, the city center is full of foreigners, both investors and tourists. Local people don’t take a taxi — they take a bus or they drive a taxi. Local people often don’t go out to eat in restaurants — the eat at home or they work in restaurants. Economic differences between local people and foreigners are felt in all areas of life. In Tirana, I had a strong feeling that local people from Tirana often feel as second-grade citizens in their own city, “occupied” by English-speaking foreigners, surrounded by fancy shops, cars and restaurants, which they, local people — can’t afford. This short film is a documentation of one humble effort of trying to make a local taxi driver feel he’s at home in his own city, by a simple act of showing an interest in his culture via his own personal — music playlist.

Azerbaijan

The movie is about a packed poor community living in Darnagul. Azerbaijan is oil reach, but most of the profit is gathered under the power of the ruling elite class. Poverty is real in most of the districts and people move to Baku with a hope of a job to cover their basic needs. It leads to over-population and high centralization of the capital city where already around 5 million people (taking into account the whole peninsula) are residing (official statistical numbers are modified/falsified to show less). These kinds of communities living outskirts of Baku are mostly people who migrated to Baku from the other districts or are internally displaced people after the Nagorno-Karabagh/Artsakh war. These Neighborhoods are under very poor conditions and people live in very anti-sanitary conditions. Toilets are usually public where most people use the same toilet in the neighborhood (mostly outside the apartments) and people mostly do cheap labor work to survive. They mostly sell goods or repair things for so cheap and they open a bazaar/market every Sunday to offer their services or sell their goods.

Phillipines

Overview: Lost in Manila? How about have a shot? We start spectating a creative person who misses a chance to make something great. Did we miss her starting point?

USA

The film aims to repurpose 2000 acres of underperforming and marginalized land for shared timber farming to enact a more adequate synergistic relationship (socio-economically and environmentally) between the built space and the fragmented Hudson Valley’s forest. In Hudson Valley, most of the trees are privately owned, growing on land at the fringe of urban development- Wildland Urban Intermix (WUI). Tackling the large-scale U.S. monopoly of engineered-timber products, the project envisions a bottom-up timber economy- a vertically integrated, resilient timber supply chain- as a way to incentivize private landowners to sustainably manage their own forests while directly accessing a shared infrastructure of researching, harvesting, manufacturing, and retail, waste-recycling, and branding for their timber product. By creating shared collaborative infrastructure for local forest and small-timber-business owners and entrepreneurs, new social partnerships and equally-distributed amenities will be created, boosting local economies while preserving the local and regional forest ecologies. By sustaining long-term forest-plant-based economic development through this shared co-op system, Hudson Valley’s scaled-down timber industry will be funneled while a more socially adequate distribution of profits between diverse communities will be achieved. Composed of four entities, the Center for Resilient Forestry, which is clustered with Wood Innovation Facilities, the Certification Centers, the Sawmill and Distribution Center with additional facilities for Recycling and Storage and Renewable Energy Generation, this project provides a lasting infrastructure that promotes a holistic framework for profitable and sustainable timber agroforestry that ensures the wellbeing of both the forest and its inhabitants.

Georgia

The film is about the milk that gold and other ore mining companies distribute to employees to protect their health.