“Every street has its story. Not every street has its film...,” says the My Street Films project and the citizens of London and Prague seem to agree. They have grabbed their film cameras, cameras and mobile phones to introduce the stories of their streets to the whole world. Meet their best films as well! Watch a selection of the best British and Czech My Street documentaries from Monday, September 1 to Sunday, September 7 at DAFilms.com for free!
The My Street Films project was founded in London by Michael Stewart, director of Open City Docs Fest, in 2011 and moved outside the UK via the DAFilms.cz portal in 2014. The film fever which had struck all of London has flooded the streets of Prague in 2014. "My Street is a kind of citizen journalism," explains the project founder Michael Stewart. "It is all about exploring the boundaries of documentary, which are shifting all the time." The Czech initiator of the project, Diana Tabakov of the DAFilms.com team, most appreciates the educational potential of the film map: “The project interconnects the fields of film education and civil life in an interesting way. Since the My Street Films website is primarily a map where people can pin their short films, it creates a unique opportunity to present the Czech Republic abroad in an untraditional way.”
However, did they really succeed in convincing the film amateurs, enthusiastic local patriots and professional filmmakers to tell about the places that fascinate, inspire and surprise them through short documentaries? See for yourselves in the British-Czech selection of eight My Street Films!
Five British My Street representatives open up a new London yet unseen by the eyes of tourists. The hustle and bustle of the Brixton market depicted in NICHE IN THE MARKET which has charmed the jury and won the 2013 competition as well as the unique perspective of a homeless man who guides us through London’s underground reveal the unexpected layers and moods of the city above the Thames. The experimental montage made of more than 5 000 photographs in GROSVENOR TERRACE creates an intimate portrait of the everyday life of the filmmaker while the 2014 winner FEEDING THE VOID explores the complicated role of the perfect modern woman.
The Czech vision of My Street Films has enriched the interactive map with a collaboration with professional directors who have become tutors for selected films made by beginning filmmakers. What themes and narrative forms have they chosen? At the very beginning, the project took up an experimental tone in the trailer by talented director Petr Hátle, winner of last year’s Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, and continued with the poetic images of the next representative of the young generation of Czech documentarists Ivo Bystřičan. Popular director Bohdan Bláhovec has added a multicultural playful film paraphrasing the Czech national anthem MY HOME to the Prague map while civically engaged documentarist Linda Kallistová Jablonská has captured the destruction of one of the most expensive buildings of the socialist era, HOTEL PRAHA, in an eponymous documentary.
Find the most inspiring story in the selection of 8 My Street Films and send it to your friends. Find the courage to tell the story of your street and contribute to one of the film maps. Discover and travel with My Street documentaries from Monday, September 1 to Sunday, September 7 at DAFilms.com for free!
DAFilms.com is powered by Doc Alliance, a creative partnership of 7 key European documentary film festivals. Our aim is to advance the documentary genre, support its diversity and promote quality creative documentary films.
