Is Belarus a blue-eyed country or a Chinese one with pizza and Frida Kahlo?

Art-event “Gramadzianskasc.BY-2015” took place in “U” Gallery on June 19.

Within the frames of art-event a number of significant events happened: awarding the winners of the “Modern Belarusan citizenship” competition, meeting with the founders of the projects “Belarusan fairy tales for iPhone and iPad”, “Quote your own!”, “living library”, “Eco-workshops for children”, as well as the first night of a “Belarus is like” movie. The event was presented by a poet and translator Andrei Hadanovich.

Competition of scenarios for low-budget films came as a result of the education course “12 steps towards citizenship” elaborated by the Center for Social Innovation. The best scenario was turned into a movie.

The head of the above-mentioned centre, producer Leanid Kalitsenia announced the winners of the “Modern Belarusan citizenship” competition. 3^rd place was given to Ryta Tsihanovich. 2^nd place the judges gave to Kiryl Chychelis; and, finally, the 1^st place got Ulada Sian’kova and Sviatlana Sakalouskaja for the scenario about the unusual experience of a boy, who was commanded to paint Belarus.

A shot of the movie “Belarus is like”

Script writers of the movie Ulada Sian’kova and Sviatlana Sakalouskaja (in the middle)

Producer Leanid Kalitsenia announces the winners

According to the plot of the movie, the boy went to Minsk streets to look for a real Belarus and met a lot from the mosaic of the capital’s life: shouting for sitting at the lawns, a foreigner with a Belarusan beauty, a developer that was eating pizza at a bench, a portrait-graffiti of Frida Kahlo, and the Chinese couple in love.

In the end of the movie the painting-teacher scolded the pupil for a bad painting – according to her, Belarus should only be a “blue-eyed” country with lakes. But on her way in a bus the teacher meets everything the boy was talking about.

After the presentation of the movie “Belarus is like” the crew went to the audience and told about the shooting.

The idea of the scenario came to Ulada Sian’kova and Sviatlana Sakalouskaja after they spent the whole night thinking about citizenship.

Volha Ramanava, a professional critic and a member of the jury assessed the film.

“I liked the project immensely, since now there are a lot of discussions about what is national identity in post-national world, the world of globalization, what it means to be a Belarusan, - she marked. – Theoreticians and historians speak about it in their own language, and I think it is a great idea to think about it in the language of images, in the visual language. I liked this scenario best out of six presented for its problematics: what is Belarus today unless a set of standard images?”

After meeting the crew of the movie the art-event continued with the presentation of social projects. Tatsiana Vadalazhskaja, candidate of sociological sciences, a coordinator of the Flying University

presented “Quote your own!” project, which started few weeks ago at a number of Internet resources, including “EuroBelarus”. She used a collage with the photos of famous Belarusans of different ages as a visual means.

“We all know people at these photos; but do we know their thoughts and conclusions?” – asked Tatsiana Vadalazhskaja those who were present at the art-event.

She read the quotes without naming the authors for the audience to guess their names. Unfortunately, almost nobody from the audience guessed correctly. People didn’t recognize the words of Bykau and Babkou.

Andrei Zalatar, chief producer of iOS publishing house “Kinderfox”, organized a presentation of the “Belarusan fairy tales for iPhone and iPad”. He told about the common work with the leader of the “Palac” band Aleh Hamenka and realization of idea of issuing ethnographic legacy at gadgets.

Victar Radzkou, a PR-manager of a crowdfunding platform “Ulej” (Russian “beehive” – EuroBelarus), told why we need crowdfunding and why we should support good initiatives, not put “likes” on them.

The coordinator of the project “Eco-workshops for children” Nadzeja Kuliashova told about the secrets of bringing up children kind:

“The idea of our project is so that a person who is turning from a small person to a grown up doesn’t become someone we are fighting afterwards in different state and commercial institutions, - she told. – This is what we are doing in our ecologic organizations”.

According to Nadzeja, “Eco-workshops for children” are aimed at educating children how a person interacts with the nature; including climatic changes and relations between people.

“Since when we are talking about ecology we don’t often mention ecology of a person, which is very important”, - added the ecologist.

 One of the coordinators of the social project “living library” Maria Lukashuk introduced the audience with the work of the unusual library, where books are substituted by people with unusual histories and they are ready to answer any questions. It works like this: people come to the “living library”, fill in the card, choose the “book”, and “read” it; thus, they can talk to interesting people.

“The “living library” was invented in 2000 by an organization that later got transformed into an international “Human Library”, - informed Maria Lukashuk.

A “book” in such library is a person that feels some discrimination or social isolation, pressure of the society; while the “readers” are people who are interested in destroying their own stereotypes. Coordinators of the project work as “librarians” and organize meetings of living “books” with “readers” throughout Belarus. Maria thinks that such meetings provide psychological support to both the sides.

All in all, 11 unusual “libraries” took part within the frames of the project, 3 of them are in the regions – Hrodna, Mahilieu, and Homel. The achievement of the project is 500 readers; the “living library” still plans to expand and develop.

The presenter of the event Andrei Hadanovich