Yalou's Draft Project Proposal

In Progress!

1 What do you want to make?

2 How do you plan to make it?

3 What is your timetable?

4 Why do you want to make it?

5 Who can help you and how?

6 Relation to previous practice

7 Relation to a larger context

8 References/bibliography

What do you want to make?

I first want to start with this open field and I am standing in the middle of this field. It is a bright day so with squeezed eyes I am observing this field that I am standing in the middle of. My eyes stop moving when this clear thought comes to mind: a memory of the past. A memory that I haven’t experienced but that I have been told about.

Eva and Martijn are my grandparents. They both passed away, and my memory of them is very vague. But I do feel this strong connection towards them and there are a lot of unanswered questions floating around in my mind.

And this unexperienced memory is one of the most interesting memories that I have. With so much curiosity and mystery to it, so why not make it into a documentary film? Why not make it into a poem? As that is how I love to share my memories the most.

This open field gives me the opportunity to focus on different areas of research, different questions and different moments. To analyze them and give them a place within the film:

·      My grandmother’s past as an Hungarian refugee, and how this influenced her being. (This is a research question that will be based on the material that I have, so this will partly be based on my own imagination and thoughts)

·       My grandfather’s artistic hobbies and passions. He was a writer and he loved to film and record audio.

·       The lost of contact between my mom and uncle and their father (my grandfather) as he removed and alienated himself from his children.

·       The happy moments, family moments.

·       The divorce between my grandmother and grandfather

·      My grandparents being pianists

·      The music

·       And how their being is still felt now-a-day

If all these areas, within this open field, will be answered? I don’t know.

How do you plan to make it?

Planning is a very big word to me, as I often guess what obstacles there will be in the future.

So in this open field I will start this journey with planting the seeds.

These seeds are seeds with my vision, but the seeds will grow where they want to grow.

My vision is the documentary film.

The seeds are the start of my vision, of the documentary film.

By the birth of these seeds I made sure that they knew what is important within the film.

Voice Seed 1 = Piano music written by my grandmother

Voice Seed 2 = Music based on the written music of my grandmother

Voice Seed 3 = Poetry written by me

Voice Seed 4 = Literature written by my grandfather

Voice Seed 5 = Recorded interviews

I really want to explore the poetic voice within the film. Poetry has always played a significant role in my life. And I think that the combination of music and interviews already open up some amazing poetic possibilities. So within this planting an growing process I will give myself the space and time to explore this poetic voice of mine.

Within this exploration I already have some growing idea’s:

-       Let the music talk and use different instruments that become a conversation

-       Mix my poetry with my grandfather’s poetry

-       Let the music become my words and let my words become the music

*These examples can be taken literally*

Visual Seed 1 = Archival footage from my family archive

Visual Seed 2 = Archival footage from internet archives

Visual Seed 3 = Footage recorded in Hungary

Visual Seed 4 = Footage at home

When it comes to the visuals, I am curious to explore different techniques. These techniques will be educative for me within the process but it will also add much meaning to the film. One important aspect is the meaning of the time within the film. So what is archival footage and what is new recorded footage? For now the new footage is shot in raw, so that I can explore the coloring of it. The new recorded footage will also be more stable. So it will draw a contrast with the archived footage, witch is more shaky.

What is your timetable?

Stage: collecting, editing drafts and creating

Stage: editing and creating

Stage: editing

Stage: editing and presenting

Stage: presenting

Week 1 to week 16: Stage: collecting, editing/drafting, and creating. In these weeks, I focus on collecting material (shooting material), editing with a focus on drafting different possible storylines and combinations, creating the main story, creating a focus, creating the music and writing the thesis.

In this period, there needs to be progress in a certain direction. So within these weeks, it will become more clear what material I will use, and the edit will also come together more. So that in the 16th week, I am clear about what the story will tell and what edit choices I will make. But it does not have to be finished.

Weeks 16 to 20: Stage: editing and creating.

So in these four weeks, I focus on my editing and finishing the music with my brother. Also, record the last things that need to be recorded so that I can focus on my final edits.

See these weeks as the tale of the first 16 weeks.

Week 20 to 28: Stage: editing.

In these 5 weeks, I would love to finish the film and have the first final version. I don’t know if this matches up with what the school wants from me. But this would be ideal for me.

Weeks 28 to 34: Stage: editing and presenting.

During this time, I will be finishing up the film and getting feedback on it. And I will be busy thinking about how to present and exhibit it. A very important part of the final look.

Weeks 34 to 40: Stage: presenting.

The last few weeks are always the ones that feel the most stressful. For me, it is important to have space in this time to fine-tune the presentation. And have space to fix certain things that need to be fixed before the end of June. So I call it presenting but it could also be called presenting and fine-tuning.

Week 1 to 16:

September 18th - January 8th

Week 20 to 28:

January 8th - February 26th

Week 28 to 34:

February 26th - April 8th

Week: 34 to 40

April 8th - May 20th

Why do you want to make it?

By now I sat down in the middle of this open field. With this unexperienced memory in my mind. A memory that is one out of many, told by my mother.

But the curiosity really started when I was much younger.

As we might all know, high school can be a very uncomfortable, in my experience. It was the time that I felt a lot of different emotions, and the best way to deal with these emotions was to write them all down. And that was the time that I got into poetry.

-       Poetry example from 2012    -

It was one of my favorite things to do: writing poems. I would send my poems through email to my mother. She enjoyed the little poems and when she noticed that I wrote them on a regular base, she told me about her father, my grandfather. She lost contact with him when I was around 4 years old, just before her mother died.

So my memories of him were very vague, maybe even invented because I wanted to remember him. My curiosity grew over time and eventually I asked my mother if I could get in contact with him? And if she was okay with that? But a month or 2 later, he died.

That connection and curiosity to my grandfather never went away.

My grandmother was a very particular woman. I remember her very briefly, as she died when I was only five years old.

She sat in a wheelchair and walked with canes.

She smoked plenty of cigarettes and spoke with a raspy voice.

I remember her as a gloomy person, not very happy at all.

I feel that this gloominess grew into her life. This life started in Hungary, where she was born. My grandmother being Hungarian made me feel so special. I would brag about that to everyone. The first four years of her life were spanned in the Mines in Hungary, to hide from the Nazi’s. She loved dancing as a young girl, but sadly at the age of nine she got polio. So she needed to use a wheelchair or canes to walk. At the age of 17 she and her mother and father fled Hungary because of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. That is how my grandmother ended up in The Netherlands. I assume that through all the misery there were happy moments, but those moments were never shared with me.

The rest of her Hungarian family stayed (as much as I know) in Hungary. So when I was a small child me and my family would spend the summers in Hungary, to see my great grand uncle. He was a goofy man, although I could not speak the language, I remember him positively. He had a little summer house at the Balaton river, where we would go every summer.

So this curiosity and all these childhood memories shape the base of this film. It is a way to find answers to what a family can be or ever was. I have always been fascinated by the fact that my mum often speaks negatively about her parents.

Why my mum and uncle use the first names of their parents?

There is a feeling of distance within these family conversations.

It almost feels like I am closer to my grandparents, than my mum and uncle are with there parents.

And why shouldn’t it be?

I haven’t really known them at all.

The not knowing, the mystery, the unanswered questions…all feels so familiar in a way.

You don’t choose your loved once. And maybe, in some situations, a loved one can be someone you don’t feel connected with. Or maybe being so connected to someone, makes disconnecting unescapable…

I am still sitting in the middle of this open field. It is pouring rain, yet my body can’t feel the drips of rain that touch me. There are to many to decide witch one is the biggest. My vision is getting less and less, I do know that this is a good sign. A meaningful moment for the seeds to grow.

This film. My mother’s family, is a family. Filled with unanswered family questions that are similar to the rain. And this family is in a way still very much alive today. And I feel part of it and that is what I want to make.

But who knows where the roots will grow, where the flowers will bloom and how fast the branches reach the sun.

Who can help you and how?

While sitting on this empty field, I often admire this big oak tree. The tree is very big, so big that many could live inside of it. So this tree is already occupied by my family and their passions:

- Family tree -

The oak tree is my base and the place where I often go to, for more discovery. The residents of this tree play different roles within my research journey and film journey. But all very significant to the whole project, to the whole space of this open field. And I am very glad to introduce the residents of this tree, as I see all of them as my family:

First of all my grandparents: Evà and Martijn.

They will be visible throughout the storytelling and the visuals in the project, their human forms are seen in the archive material. Martijn will share his voice mostly through the books that he wrote, and the voice recordings that he made, but also as the cameraman of the archival footage. Evà will be most visible through the piano music, that will be her voice. But she is also visible in the many video recordings of Martijn.

The next inline are my mother (Isis) and uncle (Finley).

They will be visible throughout the storytelling and the visuals in the project. But also as the once who share their past with me. The once who experienced Evà and Martijn and the once with the most memories. Their voices will be shared through interviews and through music, as they are also musicians them selves.

Then we end the line with my older brother (Ernö) and younger sibling (Joran).

For now I envision them to be part of the production and research, and not to be on camera. But you never know. Ernö and I will be working on the music and how to make that into a voice of the story, the voice of Evà. And Joran helps me with filming and other practical and technical aspects.

And then the tree is filled with all these colored leaves. These leaves stand for growing sources that I will find along the way. Sources like Judit Elek, Marjoleine Zeick, Franz Liszt and Domenico Scarlatti.

Relation to previous practice

- Some cool finding in my writing process: Rereading old emails from 2012 to 2016. Where I found my old poems and emails of events that I erased from my own memory. A very interesting process.

Rapid prototype:

1. Make a family tree of the people who are involved and their roll
2. Add images to this family tree
3. Select archival footage that is the same as the new filmed footage
4. Make it into a new sequence
5. Play with the difference
6. Write a letter to my grandfather
7. Find piano music that he listened to and make it connect