Using Film to Examine Heritage, Identity and Global Citizenship: supporting the work of the Bautzen Memorial to Engage New Audiences

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This proposal sets out to realize unanticipated impacts of Cooke's AHRC project AH/K005359/1 'Screening European Heritage'. The project will work with the Bautzen Memorial in Germany - formerly the main prison of the East German Secret Police - and the community filmmaking project 'Landesverband Kinder- und Jugendfilm Berlin', in collaboration with the British Film Institute Film Academy, to co-produce a film and accompanying online educational materials that will become part of the permanent exhibition at Bautzen and will also be submitted to young people's film festivals (in the first instance) in Berlin and Leeds. Working with a group of young people from the UK and both the former East and West German states, the film will draw on the findings of the original research on the ways in which popular culture reflects the changing legacy of the GDR in contemporary Germany, along with archival material from the Memorial. The project will provide young people, who will receive training to make the film, with a means to reflect creatively upon the lessons to be learnt from the GDR dictatorship for contemporary understandings of democracy, global citizenship and the competing ways that notions of 'heritage' relate to our sense of identity. The project is exploratory in nature and is envisaged as providing a model for groups wishing to undertake similar educational film-making projects in a range of settings. We have interest from a number of organisations wishing to see the results of this pilot, including International Service, the international development charity which works with youth groups around the world.Our main partner in this project is the Bautzen Memorial. It is the aim of the Memorial to keep alive the memory of the crimes of the East German regime as a historical warning for contemporary society. Central to its strategy is to support the political education of young people, both across the former East and West German states and also within a European context. The Memorial is currently focussed on expanding its visitor demographic, which is predominantly East German. It is the aim of this project to support the Memorial in this endeavour, bringing together as participants East and West Germans. Moreover, through the inclusion of UK participants it will also help the Memorial to develop internationally-focussed, English language pedagogical material in order to enhance its offering for international visitors. The project team and Bautzen Memorial will also work with 'Landesverband Kinder- und Jugendfilm Berlin' (LKJB), an educational filmmaking charity that aims to turn young people from passive consumers of audio-visual media into active and critical practitioners. The charity offers young people a professional introduction to basic filmmaking techniques and supports them in developing and realising their own projects in small groups. One of LKJB's strategic aims is to prompt young people to ask questions about society and history by means of their audio-visual practice. The charity has a strong interest in creating such an engagement with the GDR past, a period of history which young people did not witness but which is crucial to understanding contemporary Germany and its role in Europe. Normally working within Berlin and its surrounding areas, the LKJB would benefit greatly from being able to extend its reach through cooperation with the Bautzen Memorial. The project will, moreover, allow LKJB to develop links with the British Film Institute's Film Academy, allowing both film-training initiatives to share best practice.