association

Association. During our stay in Mataró, after a while we realized that strangely it reminds us to a hungarian city, where we have worked several times. Dunaújváros is in 60 km distance from Budapest, set on the side of the river Danube. It is a traditionally working city, as its was born with the factories around it. On the other hand it is an important cite for art, as the Institute of Contemporary Art Dunaújváros is based here, which supports young art and contemporary moovements. The firs generation of artists mooved here in the late 50’s, early 60’s, as they were employed in the factories. It was one of the few cities where artists were integrated with their work into the life of the factories, and the city. The new generations are independent, and many of them move to the capital, but the city still has a extraordinary contact to art.

Our aim is, to introduce this city, and make a formal connection in between Dunaújváros and Mataró.

Dunaújváros (Between 1951–1961 was named as Sztálinváros which means Stalin City) is a city in Central Hungary, along the Danube (Hungarian name: Duna) river. It is in the county of Fejér.

History Dunaújváros is one of the newest cities of the country. It was built in the 1950s during the industrialization of the country under Socialist rule, as a new city next to an already existing village, Dunapentele.

Dunapentele: The area has been inhabited since ancient times. When Western Hungary was a Raman province under the name Pannonia, a military camp and a town called Intercisa stood in this place, at the border of the province. The Hungarians conquered the area in the early 10th century. The village Pentele, named after the medieval Greek saint, Pantaleon, was founded shortly after.

Between 1541 and 1688 the village was under Ottoman rule, and during the 15-year war it was completely destroyed. During the freedom fight led by Prince Francis II. Rákóczi the place was deserted again. In the 18th the village began to prosper. In 1830 the village got the right to hold two market days every week. In 1831 there was a cholera epidemic and the peasants revolted. In 1833 Pentele was granted town status (oppidum) by Ferdinand V. The citizens took part in the freedom fight in 1848-49.

After the Second World War the new, Communist government started a major industrialisation programme, in support of its rearmament efforts. In 1949 Dunaújváros was chosen as site of the largest iron and steel works. Originally they were to be built close to Mohács, but the Hungarian- Yugoslavian relations worsened, and this new site was chosen, farther away from the Yugoslav border. The city was designed to have 25.000 residents.

The construction of the city began on May 2, 1950, near Dunapentele. Within one year more than 1000 housing units were built and the factory complex was under construction. The city took the name of Stalin officially on April 4.1952; its name was Sztálinváros, "Stalin City" as a parallel to Stalingrad in the USSR.

The metal works were opened by 1954. The city had a population of 27,772 at this time; 85% of them lived in nice, comfortable apartments, while about 4,200 people still lived in uncomfortable barracks which originally provided "homes" for the construction workers.

In the middle of the 1950s, public transport was organized, buses carrying 24,000 passengers each day. During the 1950s many cultural and sports facilities were built, the Endre Ságvári Primary School being the largest school in Central Europe in the 1960s.

In 1956, the construction was hindered by an earthquake and a flood, and in October by the start of the 1956 Hungarian Revoluion. During the revolution the city used its historical name Dunapentele again. The Rákóczi radio station, which was created by the revolutionaries, was broadcasting from Dunapentele (in fact from a bus that was constantly moving around in the city so that it couldn't be located.) Even though the citizens of Dunapentele tried to defend their city, the Soviet army occupied the city on November 1956. The city fell under martial law, Russian tanks were standing everywhere.

After the revolution the city was still the "trademark city" of socialism in Hungary, and was presented as such to foreign visitors. Among the visitors were Yuri Gagarin and the Indonesian president Sukarno. The city also provided scenery to popular movies.

In 1960, the ten-year-old city already had 31,000 residents to celebrate its anniversary.

On November 26, 1961 the city's name was changed to Dunaújváros (Duna|új|város meaning Danube-new-city; "new city on the Danube". See also Tiszaújváros) as a consequence of Stalin's death (1956) and the Hungarian Revolution (1956).

The DUNAFERR factory complex is still is a determinant enterprise in the Hungarian steel industry, and a major employer in the area.

Today "New Danube City" is home to many new infrastructures (New Danube bridge, direct highway link between Budapest and Dunaújváros) and the new South Korean Hankook factory, Europe's biggest tire factory of Hankook. This and other projects make Dunaújváros a new Hungarian boomtown.

Twin towns: Dunaújváros is twinned with: Elbasan, Albania; Linz, Austria; Silistra, Bulgaria; Villejuif, France; Terni, Italy; Giurgius, Romania; Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia; Inegöl, Turkey; Alchevk, Ukraine.

http://www.dunaujvaros.hu/

Institute of Contemporary Art Dunaújváros: http://www.ica-d.hu/

role of work

The role of work. The IES Pla d’en Boet, the school where our participants learn, is located in the suburbs; most families whose children come to this school are attached to the area because of their work. Some came to live here in their hope for work.

Finding workplace is primarily economic demand, but at the same time there are social or psychological expectations and effects attached to it. The jobs attained, adapting yourself to the community of your new workplace result in a new type of identity and gives you a chance for respect and integration.

language

Language. The creation of the film as well as the realisation of the research was strongly influenced by language competence. How well can we make ourselves understood by participants? Although we were prepared to this, we were surprised at times. An important experience was to realize that we were not able to work with a translator.

Kids had to adapt to our poor knowledge of language. They had to be patient. In their excitement to understand us, and make us understand them, they tried to tell what they wanted in different ways, which was amusing for them, and also developed their verbal competence. They not only had to concentrate on being understood, but also to understand what we wanted to express, therefore during work they often repeated what Katalin told, to be shore, they really understood what she wanted to say. This competence is important even between native speakers. They also developed their non-verbal communication skills, as we often had to find out movements, gestures to be understood – which was also a great advantage for the film.

presence

Presence. It had a great impact on the work how seriously children took the project. When working together with us, at shooting or at other tasks they took it very seriously, they were very active and worked with pleasure on acting out, brain-storming, or writing the scenes.

On the other hand, for some hidden reason they quite often missed out our sessions. Maybe they were busy with their daily tasks, school, family, and friends. This was quite unfavourable in the sense that we had less time for working together, for example out of two Saturdays of shooting only some of them appeared on the first, and the second we had to put off as nobody could attend the session. Other times only some of the kids were missing, but this still set back our work. Each time we had to be very flexible with our plans, so we practically changed the programme day by day. There were scenes that we left out from the film and others that we spontaneously edited to the project. /One of these was the love story of Rosa María and Demba or that Deniel’s role (the father) was acted by András./

Interest was not only related to other “businesses”. Framing the film is a creative, zippy and fascinating work which gives an opportunity to self-expression, emergence. Those, who are not actually performing, are bored. Often they have to wait for the equipment or the scenes to be shot again and again. If someone does not see the goal in front of his eyes permanently – and 14 year old kids see it less as the older teens – they loose interest in work quickly. The difference in the interest of the 3 “sides” gave special dynamics to the development of the project. Monika was interested in the research, observation, therefore in the process. Katalin wanted to finish the film, therefore she was stressing the production. Kids wanted different things, mainly fast success in their personal relations and in acting.

process

Age. According to Katalin, the other factor that influences the work is the fact, that as opposed to our previous plans we chose a younger age range for making them film with. It is more complicated to work with them intensively (compared to 20-year-old youngsters), also making them describe phenomena is more difficult. By all means, more time is needed from the point of both the shooting and the research. Acting does not part from their real selves at this age.

process

The selection process: 8 May, Tuesday We started to search for possible partners and participant teens. First, we went to Cerdanyola district to see a foundation which supported children and teenagers who lived in the neighbourhood. Children aged 8-20 attend this institution, children from predominantly immigrant families. The older ones often cone only because, despite the fact that they grew up here, they did not get citizenship or work permit automatically, and if they are not employed illegally, they just walk around aimlessly. At the foundation they can use the computers and take part in the educational programmes.

Teachers emphasize that youngsters attending the institution are usually hard to deal with, and rather undermotivated. Most of them sometimes come other times not. We had the impression that was otherwise affirmed by out assistant/interpreter, Monica, that associates of the foundation were so deeply involved and slightly exasperated that however helpful they are, in fact they don’t want anybody to chip into the process they started with the youngsters who contacted them. It was confusing in a sense that it planted the feeling in us that it would be impossible to start our project in May and find an enthusiastic group to work with. Luckily it happened other way. On the one hand we were almost resigned to failure, but at the same time, in the first days started to fluster, which fortunately disappeared later.

At the selection process, although our intention was to choose children ourselves, we weren’t aiming to find children for specific characters but for teamwork and doing so we had to take many aspects into consideration: their free time, their age (we wanted children of similar age), their enthusiasm; so it was important for us that they could spend a lot of time with us and that they were willing to spend that time with us. Despite all this, or especially because of this, we managed to select exactly the ones who wanted to participate indeed.

After visiting the foundation we went to the high school called Institute Pla d’en Boet. Everything was speeding up here. Delícia – member of the Can Xalant staff – arranged us a meeting with a local teacher, Elvira Carrió who otherwise organised drama classes at school. She was very nice and helpful, moreover, extremely constructive. After we had briefly explained her what we wanted, she agreed and encouraged to set off and visit some classes to tell them our ideas personally. We were all surprised, Delícia rushed back to pile up the posters and Katalin tried to remember as much of her Spanish as she could and we entered classes where we met kind and helpful teenagers.

Finding the right children for our project was absolutely successful and we reached our goal to find the right number of motivated young teenagers for the shootings of the episode. At the same time, we should be aware of how much the children and different factors of the selection process affected the “research” and modified even the project. As we had created our project plan without knowing anything about the place, it was predictable that local characteristics would modify and direct the work.

13 May, Sunday. I realised that the plan we had handed in was matching only with the core structure of the actual project that could be carried out. Without local knowledge, in our plan we were referring to the fact that as the town was growing, there were new quarters emerging where inhabitants moved in and with the help of our film we wanted to study the needs of these people.

However, in lack of local knowledge it was not clear for us that the newest quarters of the town were far from Can Xalant, so we were developing the project in a different environment that we first decided to focus on.

When in Budapest, we started planning our stay, we asked Oriol (collaborate of Idensitat) to get in touch with local organisations, schools so as to help our search for children interested in our project. Our motivation was avoiding a situation when nobody would have been interested in our project. Oriol might have been surprised as that could have been part of the fieldwork that we ourselves find the right group of children. As time was short, we could not chose this. We were very lucky to work with the IES Plat d’en Boet and to have the drama teacher’s help as well as to find such enthusiastic kids.

The children attended the school close to Can Xalant; they came from the neighbouring districts which were mainly expanding in the past. Katalin suggested that the place of the story should be the whole town. This was appropriate as – opposite what we presumed - new quarters were integrated to the “body” of the town, were connected to the centre, so the town and its services and urban areas formed a homogeneous unit. Also not all kids were living in the same area.

As Katalin claimed even from the viewpoint of the shooting, the town is not too big, can be easily walked round as children tend to often do it. So – even we did not look deeply into te life of any neighbourhood – when searching for places for the film, talking about the city each part of it was included and discussed.

girls and boys

Girls and Boys. The soap opera syllabus intensified the traditionally girlish trend; this was problematic only when it seemed that we were “losing” the male members of the group. Originally there were fewer boys at the selection process, and on the first day of shooting out of 6 only 2 boys came. Therefore is seemed possible that we were running out of boys as they were less interested in the story or maybe it was due to the dominance of the girls. During the selection most girls who got into the group were friends in their lives as well, as it seemed some of them were very close friends. This fact restricted a bit the activity of other members. Moreover the group followed those 1-2 opinion leaders.

questions and changes

Questions and changes: It was questionable from the beginning how our plan suits the local conditions; and how the environment and the participants alongside with other collaborates influence the process by virtue, including the project team.
It was obvious from the first day that the realisation of the project depended on the selection of the participant children as well as that of locations. The effects of age and gender differences ant the existing emotional relations fundamentally affected the work and the development of the story.

roles

Roles. Naturally, everybody wanted to be older than their real age, being at least 20-22 years old. Practically 2-3 girls invented most of the characters, relationships and story lines. What participants invented predestined the basis of the film. As everyone got their role on the first day, even though Dani missed out our sessions for a while (he travelled to Hungary with his band) but finally, at the end of the shootings he jumped back to the role he had chosen at the beginning, and gave an interview as one of the protagonists, the poor boy’s father.
Katalin Soós decided that everybody used their real names in the story, which seamed to be a good decision: it helped her to instruct the kids as there was only one name attached to each one of them. The other thing was enforcing the link between fiction and reality, which was important for the enquiry.If children don’t hide behind other names to their characters, the result won’t be that abstract, so the kids reflect more on reality in the film.

whose story

Whose story? On our third meeting (15 May, Tuesday) we gave out two sheets with one image and some questions on each. These were the following: Imagine a character who lives in this house. What do you think his job is? Who does he live together with? What do you think his dreams are?

(Yachts at the port) Imagine a dialogue between two people who are at this place and write down some sentences of their conversation. Common work begun with such and similar small exercises. Although we did not mention the kids that the images are related to the soap opera, without being instructed, they tried to place the previously designed characters and episodes at the locations in the pictures. We did not as them not to discuss their answers with each other, so almost all of them wrote the same to the first picture, namely, that Ainoa lived in the house, and also their answers followed Ainoa’s description of her character. There were more differences at the port scene, they chose scenes from those that they previously planned to shoot in the port/ on the beach.

It was reflected in their teamwork, in the clear development of the story that they were used to working together as a group. In a few days they managed to develop a story, almost as well as a professional story liner team. Dominant members of the group were playing amazingly naturally and in the spirit of their roles. Esteisis showed her nature-born talent who is able to burst into tears immediately in the most dramatic moments, girls were very creative when forming the story and their character.

film and love

Film and love. Naturally, like in every soap, and among all teenagers, love, the body and look were important topics in the group. Although in the beginning they were avoiding direct love relations in the story, slowly more and more romantic relations were imagined between their roles. For girls it was more important to concentrate on the female features of their characters. One of them admitted to dream about becoming a perfect women.

meeting the parents

Meeting the parents. We interviewed Dani’s and Quim’s mothers for an interview. Information shared by them cant be generalized as they are definitely different from other parents in many aspects, and we had no information about them, not even from their children, they did not come to the meetings either. Dani’s mother is Catalan; Quim’s mother is Spanish, from Andalusia. Both parents chose the school because its closeness to their home. They agreed that there was a big pressure on their children because they had a lot of classes even if the level of education is not particularly high.

Daniel – according t his mother - wants to be a biologist, sometimes engineer or a postman. His mother would be happy if he chose to be a musician or an artist. Quim’ – just like many other children – wants to be a vet, otherwise is interested in cars. (The other day he told us that he was going to be an English teacher.) His mother would be happy if he became a nurse. In fact there is no specialization at school, if somebody wants extra or would like to learn something special, they must attend private lessons.

According to the parents in Mataró there is no difference between the statuses of jobs. People can work in many different areas and in service industry, in boutiques and shops you can always find vacancies. Both of them like living in Mataró and would not be happy to move off, they are satisfied with their work as well.

Career

Career. As the importance of work in children’s and their families’ life had drawn our attention, we asked questions about the same subject when interviewed parents and Elvira. As Elvira emphasises, she thought that most children did not go on to higher education after finishing high school. Therefore their ambition to become vets, solicitors or singers - as they claimed at the second shooting - remains a dream.

There are good pupils and teachers pay particular attention to them. They tend to suggest parents to send their children to higher education but this is only possible if parents are able to provide a financial support for them. This shows that – even if parents are employed – their income is too low to spend it on education. On top of that, according to Elvira Carrio for many families this is not a priority. The fact that only two of the participants’ parents came to watch the projection on the 21 of September shows the lack of interest towards their children’s activity as well as their surfeit.

Desires

Desires. During the conversations, which were of course dominated by girls, it seemed that they do not have extraordinary ambitions concerning economic needs. But concerning their carriers, they had extraordinary goals, which can be recognised as desires. These are not lifelong plans, they do not see the rout towards these goals, they do not plan, just wish everything will come true. The roles are mostly everyday characters, a bit richer or a bit poorer than the average but there is no radical dissimilarity between them. Talking about themselves, or rather about their character most of them told they were ordinary, everyday people. They are motivated by becoming respected, by friendship, living in decent conditions and by being loved by everybody.

Kids and the city

The kids and the city. “Our kids” know the city, and they are starting to use it. By all means, they gave a detailed description of it and enlightened us about the differences between certain parts of the town. They seemed to know the town quite well (it is quickly discoverable indeed), so their parents supposedly consider its different parts safe as they let their children get about alone, and with us. Coming from a big city Mataró seamed rather safe. The kids moved comfortably in the town, they acted as confident hosts, who “rule” the place, some of them showed us also their homes.

At the first conversation, we marked the places that children labelled as “good” and “bad” places as the possible scenes of the shots. The bad ones were the Cerdanyola and Rocafonda districts, the good ones were the centre, the main park the beach and the shopping centre (the last was not used in the film.) In the Rocafonda immigrants, prostitutes, drug addicts, and thieves live, therefore it is bad – told us the kids, who do not live in Rocafonda.

IES Pla d'en Boet 2

...According to Elvira, a lot of children come from rather poor families. The school – respectively the state – supports their education in various ways like offering grants, social support, or a programme for borrowing school-books. At the same time, her experience is that some families do not have the motivation, skills, know-how to go for this support. Many of the parents - who, in their new homes are left without the economical and emotional help of their wider families - work until 8 o’clock and therefore are not able to care enough about their children’s education, everyday problems outside the family. According to Elvira, many children are left alone, especially in terms of their promotion at school as parents are unable to pay attention to their development.
Only one third of parents attend the parent-teacher meetings.There are several schools in Mataró, the IES Pla d’en Boet is attended by a relatively larger number of immigrant children. As it is practically on the outskirts of the town, some children commute to the school from settlements in the neighbourhood.

Immigrant families come to the region especially because of work, but it happens that parents remain without job for a longer period of time. Children’s placement to schools is arranged by the local council, they distribute children registered at the council between schools keeping in mind that the proportion of children of diverse origin should be similar in each school. Newcomer immigrant children attend a “catch-up” class at least for a year to learn Catalan language. Children of Latin-American origin are integrated earlier to normal classes. The integration of Chinese children is the most difficult. According to Elvira, they need at least six years to learn the language.

Out of the thirteen children we chose, one was born in the Dominican Republic, one in Valencia and there were three or four who were born in Mataró but of non-Catalan origin. We did not asked children directly who saw themselves as Catalans, two of them mentioned it spontaneously. Being Catalan is an important element of identity even at this age – much more than data of origin. „I am much more Catalan than Spanish” – told us one of our participants, who proved to be of Andalusian origin, although (partly because of the large number of his hairdresser father) he is deeply integrated to the local community.

IES Pla d'en Boet

IES Pla d’en Boet. The fact that there were so many children interested in the project was due to the kids’ openness, the nature of the school and not least to Elvira Carrió, the enthusiastic teacher who introduced us in the classes. Elvira is organising drama classes in the after school hours, therefore she has a position a similar position in relation to the kids as we have, and knows them through personal relations.

The school our group is coming from is a public high school. According to locals, the level of public education in Catalonia is usually high. We made interviews with the mothers of two boys (Dani and Quim) in September, they were both satisfied with the school, although they were aware of the fact that the quality of the education in there is not very high. In their opinion – and the opinion of the teacher - this was partly due to the large number of pupils coming from non Catalan speaking, immigrant families, and their integration “pulls down” this level. The active fluctuation is also moderates development. Many immigrants look at Mataró, as a gate, where they start a new life. Later they leave to other places or back home. The subjective critique and the objective content might seem controversial, but there is no mistake: the newcomer families do not want to win anything, but to gain stability, to get on in life in confidence. The public school helps this process, gives a bases for the kids – not more. It is not a segregated school, only one that gives enough to all youngsters to start life, find a job, although does not make further studies easy. Only less than the half of the children go on to higher education. Most families are interested in sending their children to work, therefore after finishing school most of them attends a vocational training or a course that is financed by the state.

may days

Creation of the story, the shooting:
10 May, Thursday (cont.) we made them talk about the places, they were so enthusiastic that practically they started work… they started choosing possible places for the shooting like Cerdanyola and Rocafonda quarters, the city centre, the main park and the beach. After choosing the places Katalin asked them where they thought different characters lived, what their job might be. They said that mainly the poor and the immigrates lived in Cerdanyola and Rocafonda. As Katalin suggested there are good and bad, as children suggested there are rich and poor, and characters are inspired by places. In the story there was a secret agent, one of the main characters, another policeman, girls, drug dealers, criminals, an ill mother and her poor child who becomes a robber to be able to buy medicines. Alpha will be rich, he insists on that. Ainoa and Cristina dominated group communication because of their dominant personality and their age.

12 May, Saturday Meeting with the guys, going to see possible places for shots. In the morning we tried to talk through what children had found out by far: characters: 2 policemen, 3 girls (one works in the pharmacy, another has been robbed), a poor boy whose mother is in hospital, 2 rich criminals (one of them is the good boy’s father who had left the mother, so the good boy does not know that he is his father).
We meet children at five in the afternoon in Can Xalant. Out of 14, there are only 8 children. 3 girls will probably not come later and we don’t know when others will join the group.

15 May, Tuesday The state of dialogues
The meeting is a bit chaotic at the beginning but finally with Monica’s help (she jotted down the dialogues) we manage to create the script of some scenes. She understood them, work went faster with her, she was carried away by the work which unfortunately meant that she gave them tips when they got stuck, she wanted to inspire them. Her good intention again resulted in her controlling the communication. It became impossible, of course that she interpreted at the same time but at least she wrote down the story successfully.
Anyway, it became almost impossible for me to study communication through work process and it is obvious that now there is nothing I could do about the situation… there is no chance to use any verbal information…

16 May, Wednesday Shooting in the afternoon we took the camcorder and visit some places where we planned to do the shooting to make stills of squares and houses from outside. The children came at 17.00, there were only two boys again, Quim and a new boy, Adonis who was unfortunately quite young. We managed to film three places: the hospital, the park and a part of the beach.
The girls, especially Esteisis and Rosa María were acting like perfect cuties. María seemed absolutely natural but Esteisis seemed to have prepared for the performance, she had pencilled her eyes and dressed up. She was a bit exaggerated when stressing the effeminacy of the main female character.

In the afternoon when we checked the shots, it turned out that some voice recordings and some shots were missing and some of the scenes were of poor quality…Anyway we had a discussion over technical problems. It slightly disappoints me that these technical issues are beginning to dominate the work whereas we still don’t know much about the children.

17 May, Thursday the panic of the shooting. Unfortunately, half of the group hasn’t arrived, so we shot some scenes but I didn’t give the questions of the survey to the children. Sessions are usually shooting stories that had formerly been invented, children are instructed by Katus or Andris; the story this way remains more or less the same depending on how much children empathise with their character. The places and other elements of the story have changed several times depending on how much energy or time we actually had. As Demba was injured we couldn’t go to the port to shoot the bad guy scene but we shot it in front of two office buildings, too. Earlier girls proposed that Cristina should fall in love with Demba but as Cristina didn’t come to the shooting, Katalin changed the story and made Rosa María to get together with Demba in a scene at the football pitch, that was previously not in the story. Rules of film making are determining the process as children let it out of their hands. As at the beginning they were leading us creating the trunk-line of the film with enthusiasm, now that we got to the labour-intensive and halting parts namely the shooting of each scene, they’ve lost their patience. They don’t come which sets back the work.

20 May, Sunday Parents’ attention. We met Christina Pratzal’s family. They were very kind. From their reactions we could tell that they were interested in the programme. A strange part of this work is that although the parents know about our work as children needed their permission to come to the shootings, we haven’t had any contact with them by far. Apart from Christina’s parents we met only Quim’s mother who was kind, too and we could tell that the child talked a lot about us at home. Fussier or more thorough parents - as it turned out – had called the Can Xalant where it was explained to them in details what their children were taking part in.

21 May, Monday When Katalin and András came back we divided the group. Andris, Quim, Ainoa and María plus me went to shoot the pharmacy scene. Quim interprets and instructs a little bit and girls go to the pharmacy (without being asked) and they ask very politely whether we could film in front of the pharmacy.
While we are shooting at the pharmacy, Katalin started interviewing the children. These were quite interesting, the majority of the group really enjoyed that they had the chance to talk at last, there were only a few of them who couldn’t clearly understand that they had to talk about their characters and not about themselves. We had to face a technical problem that noise was too loud everywhere, so we had to record the interviews again. Kids were working mainly on the base of stereotypes, but it became clear that if they have the opportunity to talk individually and can concentrate on themselves instead of the situation, so let’s say in an interview situation, they tell a lot more information about themselves. In my opinion they are originally more inhibited to talk in group even though it seemed that they were much better in this area than their peers. (I managed to record something else onto these interviews the next day, so on the last day we re-recorded them but that tape has disappeared for good……)

22 May, Tuesday Apart from shooting some scenes we talked through the script of their scenes with the children; the majority of the group was present this time. Monica helped to jot them down. Girls were dominant in creating the script, of course, unfortunately they weren’t able to liberate themselves from the basic information and story-telling, and as far as I understood they created stereotypical dialogues, but at least they had a good time laughing at quotes they borrowed from pop singles or soap operas. Naturally, telling the love story generated giggles, too. This time, Monica didn’t really intervene and she could hold the scattered and giggling group perfectly under her control.
In the meantime, Katus and Andris are shooting the missing scenes in various rooms of Can Xalant. One scene has been shot in Monica’s studio when Rosa María tells her friend, Sandra (who is otherwise one of the cops) about her flirt that Demba has chatted her up. Maybe because other children were not present at the shooting you can feel the intimacy of the situation that makes it authentic.

23 May, Wednesday I (Monika) intend to make the interviews again, while children are recording dialogues in the studio. Children were sparkling in the studio, they were able to enter into the spirit of the scenes, but sometimes they broke into laughter…
Fascinated by professional environment, microphones, for example kids decided to record a song together, but it took them long to find one that everybody knew, but when they realised that lyrics can easily be found on the internet; hell broke loose and everybody started searching for other Spanish singles. They took the office and captured the employees of Can Xalant to help them as there is no real TV series without a theme song….

Selection

The selection. We started to search for the participants of the programme at two places. The first institution where we got to with the help of Can Xalant was a foundation in Cerdanyola that deals with children. Most of them are coming from immigrant families, living in poor conditions. Practically, we did not succeed here at start, and as we fount visit to our next “enlistment” place more successful, we did not return to the foundation.

We found our participants in a school, the high school called IES Pla d’en Boet. (About the conditions of the selection see the procedure analysis later.) Finally we announced that the program will start in Can Xalant at 17.00 on Wednesday.

(9 May, Wednesday) Finally, there were about 30 children. We introduced our plans, and told about some projects Katalin made in cooperation with other young people or artists. We handed out the guides, and a questionnaire that children filled in. After that we made a portrait of each of them.

Some children copped out because of the fear they have to perform, and the “big girls” took over, which has also discouraged the young ones. Those, who could speak English were enjoying their privileged communications position, their interpreting role. Many kids came with their friends, for them joining the project was an opportunity for common entertainment, the “lonely” ones could not take part in it. After the meeting we chose 13 children on the grounds of the photos, questionnaires and our impressions. The very small ones (13-year-olds) were left out. It was interesting, that mainly those kids returned the next day to the “announcement of results”, who we have chosen, the others lost interest. This shows, that the group - although we selected the members – was formed more organically, at the first meeting: personal motivations (to creative work, socializing, and communicating), and group dynamics could emerge.

Frankfurters

Frankfurters. From the first day, we noticed a gastronomic phenomenon which was interesting for us: the popularity of “Frankfurter bars”. Seeing Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, or even Turkish restaurants would not have been such a surprise. But why exactly Bockwurst? In the majority of the bars we experienced almost perfect German menu, just as if we were in Berlin. There were some places where the spelling had slightly transformed, but we had to appoint that in Catalonia but at least in Mataró the German sausage is as much a national food as at the Bavaria. In Mataró we saw no end of sausage grill bars but we saw the same type of bars in Calaf, Manresa or Barcelona, too. We asked about the reason of their popularity as many people as we could. Some of them said it was in fashion, others came up with its cheapness: there can be something in this. As a significant part of the inhabitants are not really wealthy, so a relatively cheap form of entertainment and nutrition is drinking beer and eating sausages, combining them sometimes with watching a football match.

Trains, rock etc.

Trains, rock and artists. According to our interpreter, the town – to present its cultural heritage- has been planning to establish museums of railway, rock and art for years.

Railway is important because the first railway in the country was built between Barcelona and Mataró. The apropos of the rock museum would be those several rock band that originated from this town. It must be characteristic of industrial towns – several bands stem from Lyon, Manchester, or the Hungarian Dunaújváros. Hungarian visitors see the promotion of contemporary art, visual arts in Catalonia significant, there are relatively many cultural organisations in Mataró. The Can Xalant itself is a centre which every Hungarian settlement - including Budapest – dreams of.

music and people

What music do you dance to? On May 20. we were witnesses of an interesting event, which reveals a lot about the connection of the local people to cultural diversity: There was a festival at the weekend (19^th-20^th). At night a stage was built on a big square next to the mobile fun-fair. On the stage, a female singer was singing popular and traditional Spanish songs in Spanish. After these came the performance of a flamenco group.

The target audience of the performance was obviously those 20-30 pensioners who were sitting on some benches placed opposite the stage. They were probably Spanish inhabitants of the neighbourhood. They were minority, as we could see. The majority of visitors were the inhabitants of Maghrebi or Central-African origin. They were obviously uninterested in the performance. In contrast to the Spanish pensioners they were hundreds, standing at the sides of the square, on the square, also behind the stage at the fun-fair. And of course, in front of the “locutoria”. Especially teens (boys more), mums (who usually could not be seen in these streets during the day) and their little children. The performance on the stage drew the attention of only a couple of them.

Pla d'en Boet

Pla d’en Boet – migration and work. There are immigrates living in almost every district, who came to the city in search for work. There were two big waves of immigration. In the 60’s and 70’s a big number of native Spanish population migrated from other parts of Spain. In recent years, decades the number of foreign immigrates has increased steadily. Most of them come from South –America, Africa, but there are Chinese, Vietnamese and Eastern-Europeans as well. There are several plants dealing in food-storage and processing in the area of Pla d’en Boet, therefore the number of immigrant families is higher here.

Districts

Districts. Adapting to the cliches of the soap opera, Katalin requested the children to chose the “bad places” and the “good places” for the scene of the film. Most children named Rocafonda district as ‘bad place’, in the second place, usually the Cerdanyola district, only a couple of children proposed completely different places and two of them thought there were no bad places in the town.

Despite the different characters of the distinct parts of the town, on the actual day of shooting the children did not really boggle about shooting scenes of one particular district at a different place. It can mean that the differences between various districts in town are not so significant. Also this information tells us about what teenagers think of filmmaking: they know, the characteristics are important, not the actual space.

Change

Change and distinctions. Due to its economic power and favourable geographical location immigration from other parts of the country as well as from foreign countries is significant. Investors are also interested in the city. In the future, the expansion of new housing subdivisions and industrial areas near the coast might highlight the social differences.

Mataró

Mataró. Mataró is a relatively small town in Europe, its population is 118 891 (in 2006), but it is a commercially and industrially important settlement of the region. Naturally, its vicinity to Barcelona and the fact that the town is part of a touristic zone has a strong impact on it. It tells a lot about the relation of the two towns that Spain’s, just as Catalonia’s first railway was constructed between Barcelona and Mataró. Still today the importance of industrial establishments, factories and warehouses is big. The touristic importance of the town is growing, and many of the formerly industrial areas get new functions: primarily expensive flats of office buildings are being built in place of the old plants.