Schuitema previous work

‘My Open Prison’ With this project I was admitted to DocLab filmmaking Workshop 'The Roads to Integration' as part of the Verzio filmfestival in Budapest in November 2016. Outcome of the workshop was my five minute film 'My Open Prison' which was screened as part of the Verzio festival and another time at the Visual Studies Platform at CEU (Central European University). Link to the five minute film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSj6j2vCGOQ&t=19s, http://www.verzio.org/hu/node/1069, https://vsp.ceu.edu/verzio-doclab-workshop2016, This five minute is an independent clip as well as a future part of (but a film in itself, not a trailer) of a larger project, which I am still working on. This larger project consists of the stories of three individual refugees on their way from Turkey to Western Europe, filmed in Istanbul, Athens, and Paris (and the trajectories between those locations). Below you find three links to some impressions of the footage. Istanbul: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrnk9Z7chms Road between Istanbul and Athens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QywbZdjjD1w Athens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9cOJwru_E0

Logline : In ‘My Open Prison’ we get to know the Kurdish 44-year-old Hüseyin, who has been a political refugee in Athens for thirteen years. Before undertaking the cross-border journey to Greece he spent seven years in jail in Turkey. This short film intends to focus on his reflections of the seven years spent in prison, and to give expression to his internal dialogue and changing world views, his dreams and spirituality, while still living in an open prison nowadays, through a collage of mesmerizing images. Scenario/ Synopsis (Short film part 1) 44 year old Kurdish Hüseyin has fled from Turkey to Greece after being in jail in Turkey for seven years due to political issues. The film tries to show from close by, in an ethnographic way, the life he has been living in Greece, his social networks and his work after he arrived there thirteen years ago. The way in which he deals with social interactions and language is shown, but also how Greek culture and people changed his world view and his ideas. How did his mental travels, while being in jail, and his migration to Greece change him and how does his life differ from the life he once dreamed of while still living in Turkey? The film also pays attention to his Kurdish and Greek social networks. In short, with this film (and the series of short films I intend to make) I hope to give a personal face to the ‘waves in migration’, a term currently often used in the media and politics. This film is expected to be one part in a series of three short films, each focusing on a different individual migrant in some geographic location on the migration road from Turkey, through Greece, towards Western Europe: 1. Life in Turkey and the memories of the journey to Turkey from Syria

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2. Life in Greece and the memories of the journey from Turkey to Greece (the focus of the film project I am applying with to your filmmaking workshop) 3. The (possible) journey from Greece to Western Europe, ending with life in the Netherlands Visuals and experimental character The experimental character of this film mainly lies both in the fact that it will include three different locations and the journey in between them as well as the fact that the films will show a close-up of individuals, expressing their dreams, thoughts and the ways in which they feel that their journey has changed them. This focus will give the film(s) a soft spiritual character. The visuals of this film will go deeply into (and come very close to) the individual migrant as a human in his migration process. Some visuals show the memories of the main character about his migration journey. For the visualizations of some of these stories in retrospective and inner thoughts I would like to use creative, abstract images or even short fragments of stop-motion drawings.

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How the idea came into being The ideas for my intended film project are a result of my personal experience with migration issues in Istanbul, where I have been living and working from 2011-2015, carrying out the historical forced migration (population exchanges between The Balkan & Greece and Turkey) and present-day migration from and to a specific neighborhood in the center of the city. In the last few years I have been following various migrants, who agreed with their participation in this film project. In Istanbul these are Syrians, garbage collectors (from Kurdish and Bangladeshi origin) and homeless people in a park (mainly Kurdish). In Athens and in the Netherlands I have been closely involved with Syrian and Turkish-Kurdish individuals.

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