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  • Osman Bey and the Snails PRESS RELEASE

The Changing the Story Online International Film Festival 1 - 5 June 2020

25/5/2020

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Izazov!
 was first of all a research project created through Changing the Story.  

​It involved partners from the UK and BiH including Opera Circus, Kings College London, Leeds and Bournemouth Universities, Humanity in Action BiH and Sarajevo School of Science and Technology 

Further information can be found on the Izazov! website.

8 young film makers met in Sarajevo and began to work on a number of short documentaries about stories they wanted to tell.  The project continues and some of the film makers are creating second parts to their original films and others are beginning to think of new ideas for new films. They have all worked with Robert Golden, film maker and photographer who continues to mentor and advise. Some of Robert's teaching is on the Izaov! website - see blogs. 

Dr's Henry Redwood and Tiffany Fairey gathered the research along with Dr. Jasmin Hasic, Director of Humanity in Action, BiH working with the young people on their ideas and thoughts for their films.

There is a final part of the CtS work called CoLearn SEE which is about sharing the learning of the 4 year CtS project with partners in Kosovo and Rwanda. More on this soon.

Izazov! is working alongside TCFT and slowly developing into something more long term.  

These films were shown as part of a residential week in Bridport Dorset and also at King's College London with a workshop led by some of the young film makers from Bosnia and Italy.

​They include a film made by the brilliant young Kosovan film maker Leart Rama, who although sadly was not able to join us in Sarajevo, has entered his film The Station for this festival.

We hope if an Erasmus + application is successful that we will be working more closely with partners in Kosovo, BiH, Denmark and UK and develop further film making and photographic projects along with other art forms, music, theatre, Parkour, dance, spoken word etc., 



"So, celebrate the films and animations made from across the Changing the Story 27 projects as well as celebrating the work of many other projects beyond Changing the Story that are similarly using film to change people’s lives.

Over 30 film submissions were received from 15 projects across the Arts and Humanities Research Council-Global Challenges Research Fund. Films were submitted from 16 countries across the world and span a variety of formats and topics, from documentary shorts, animation to full-length features about mental health, addiction, migration and child soldiers to name a few." Leeds University.


The films will be released on the CtS website at dedicated times from 1-4 June, 2020. 

The selected Films have been organised into four themes:

Monday 1st: Narratives of the Past/Present
Tuesday 2nd: Health, Wellbeing, Loneliness and Loss
Wednesday 3rd: Youth, Resistance and Freedom
Thursday 4th:  The Human Experience

On Friday 5 June, 2020 at 12:00-13:45 BST all filmmakers will participate in an online Q&A.

Please sign up to join the Q&A by clicking on the following link. You don’t need to have watched all the films to participate but please come prepared with some questions to ask our filmmakers.

Click here to download a PDF version of the Festival Programme.
​

Please show your support for our filmmakers, some of whom are sharing their directorial debut films, by watching the film and leaving a comment in the comments section.
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THE GREAT PAUSE - sharing a title with many others!

22/5/2020

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PictureGeese in Loznica, Serbia by Lorenzo Pipparelli









​
​Next year it is 30 years since Opera Circus first emerged out of the master classes and performances several of us created in London with the great buffo bass Federico Davia. (We have attached the only biography we could find.)

What followed were nearly 10 years of touring with newly devised and commissioned productions - more information about this elsewhere on this web site - and then a number of years of recreating the company and how we worked and who with.  Often every year something different, depending on the offers, funding successes and the people rolling up.

Probably the most important of these being Nigel Osborne, Composer, Inventor, Human Aid worker, Emeritus Professor of Music at Edinburgh University, community music advocate and recently creator of Music for Well Being with the NHS as well as the music project with Cat Stevens for Syrian Child refugees in Lebanon, the Harmonics Programme.

Currently Opera Circus is working with Nigel and the film maker Robert Golden on a 9 minute "lockdown" opera called Osman Bay and the Snails.  This is based on the story of the imprisonment of Osman Kavala in Turkey and two pet snails who kept him company for a while in his cell. See more of the story on the blog below this one.  The opera will be on line in a few days on this web site and all of our social media platforms. Links to follow.

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 What's Next! 
Opera Circus is part of the Dorset section of a national group of people and organisations concerned about the shrinking and distortion of the arts in England called What's Next.  A very interesting process where over 150 artists and arts organisations in this small and underpopulated county are speaking once a week and acting together to help those who are in danger of going under. As usual Governments have no idea of how freelance artists work and talk of profits and this lack of understanding of creative working structures is causing the collapse of many people's livelihoods.  They have just understood how self employed plumbers work so maybe at some point they will try to comprehend the lives of artists.! 

At the moment the What's Next Dorset group are supporting the arts ecology in the county by sharing furloughed staff and their expertise, raising funding through an emergency crowdfunder and promoting projects that are still running to continue to source funding, for instance Bridport Arts Centre's Bridport International Prize for Poetry, Short Stories and Novels. The latter has a deadline of the end of May with chances of winning prizes up to £5000.
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Izazov! grows slowly and carefully with the films created through the project work in Sarajevo and Dorset now part of Changing the Story's International Short Film Festival online 1 - 5 June 2020. 

There are plans to screen the films live in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the first weekend of October 2020, if we are allowed to travel and gather. That weekend Reactor-Cluj should be performing at MESS Festival, their 60th anniversary, in Sarajevo and we are looking forward to seeing their work and the long term TCFT activists and friends, Raul and Petro. Dates and details to follow when we know more.

Several of the young people who created the films are either working on a second short film or Part 2 of their first film idea.  If you click on the Changing the Story link above you will find the times of the film screenings as well as the opportunity to join a Q and A with the young film makers at midday on the 5th June.  
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Erasmus + KA1 and KA2

If you have never applied for international funding from Erasmus + you are about to lose the opportunity for ever. Between 2014 and 2020 the EU provided €14.7 billion in grants for youth, sport, training  and education. The UK, although many people didn't know that this funding existed, still managed to successfully apply for just under one billion Euros (including University education and exchanges) over this period and there is still one deadline to go for Erasmus +, 1st October 2020.  After that the far right ideology-led Brexit will remove our right to participate in these grants.  It is young people who will suffer the most and this funding will not be replaced in the UK.  

There has been a great deal of lobbying the DCMS, education and youth departments but the assumption is October 1 is the end.

It is the young people from backgrounds where parents cannot afford to pay for trips and school holidays abroad, different educational offers for exchanges, scholarships and studying within Europe, who will have these opportunities denied to them in the future. 
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TCFT carries on albeit slowly. The work began to develop in Srebrenica in 2008, more information elsewhere on this web site, and has carried on developing in different ways ever since.  

We have been applying to Erasmus + (KA1 and KA2 Youth Mobility and Strategic Partnership Funding) and at the moment are waiting to hear about the KA1, the announcement is only 7 weeks late.  The KA2 we will hear about on the 16th August. More information on this on the TCFT web site soon.  We will apply again for another KA1 in October and with luck should have 70% of the funding we need for at least another 2 years work with partners in Italy, Kosovo, Serbia, BiH, Denmark and UK.  More soon.
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Naciketa - a new chamber opera - music Nigel Osborne and text Ariel Dorfman:

This bit of news is not going to turn into a big moan about Arts Council England and its current emergency funding failures, nor the disinterest of the government in the arts in the UK, see above re this.  
This is part of the Great Pause.
We have no idea.  
Having said that,
​there is a lot of creative thinking going on.  
​We will let you know when we have an idea of
What's next!
​for Naciketa...
and other new work.....

Thank you to everyone who has helped us get this far.

More news very soon.

Photography and Film: Robert Golden
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    Author

    Tina Ellen Lee Artistic Director of Opera Circus

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