New proposal

Proposal

Group of people who are same age and worked for same industrial company .They worked abroad missions to construct silos in Europe, Africa and Asia too. They came from behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ in the early 80’s at socialism era, ‘they built the Socialism’ by constructing silos in the socialist friend countries earning US dollars which was quite contrast thing at the that time of Russian ‘Big brother’ and ‘Cold war’.
My proposal is based on researching and studying the life of a generation, it is a sociological review of that generation’s golden age and fall. It is my father’s generation, for me the subject is therefore emotionally engaging. They had exclusive opportunity to work abroad when nobody was allowed to leave the ‘socialist block’. They worked far from their families not seeing them for 1 year sometimes, they were not prepared for the Western consumption based culture for the wide range items in the shops.VHS recorder and video cameras etc.
Half of the ‘Big Team’ ,the employees of the silo company who worked together for years abroad, are already dead and those are alive are struggling with life such as drinking, stress, depression and economic difficulties. This project intends to issue a life being well paid, successful and working a lot far from the family if the price of it losing health and the harmonious family life?
For the project were needed to get appointments, talking with witnesses of the subject, collecting original archive negatives and prints back to early 80’s .
The project has possibilities of lot of out comings. As in one hand it is a very personal but in the other hand it is a sociological review. It can be an almost 30 years long on-going project as it was fully documented and archived with images taken by Bahget Iskander . Iskander, the interpreter between 1980-1982 of the Hungarian Silo Builder Company, Agrikon (the former Mezogep)who took his photo series called Dollars earning Hungarians (Dollárt kereső magyarok) which were taken about daily life of the Hungarian silo workers. Iskander as he worked beside my father and others therefore he was able to support this project the most as witness of the subject, photographer and storyteller too. By that time I was 5 when I saw the first images about a silo complex in Algeria but our very first meeting had been waiting for almost 28 years.
’Uncle’Iskander advised about the project when the research was started with the famous industrial photographers couple from Germany( the Bechers, Bernd and Hilla Becher) then moved onto Edward Burtynsky, who is a Canadian photographer who takes pictures of industrial sites and factories. Making interviews with my father former colleagues, who worked for same company in Algeria, I had heard the genuine story of my father car crash, on the top of silo cells approximately at 30 m altitude, which result of it he had to be smuggled out of the country on board of an egg delivery plane to prevent the possibly lynch-law. I had been gathering stories to figures about their life that time.
Aim: Make the viewer think about meaning of life, find out about difficulties of this particular generation.
Hows: Making interviews with the members of the generation former colleagues of the company, taking portraits about the interviewed people, family members of the passed away employees to set up a storytelling reports getting a complex picture about their generation, back in Hungary.
Setting up series of images with a subtitled audio interview underneath.
Why: Being engaged with the topic, remembrance of their generation. To encourage consideration.
What is next: More research about storyteller documentaries filmmakers as Fatih Akin, Kutlug Ataman and Edward Burtynsky. The decision needs to be made about what form of this project take, which can be slide/audio installation, video or book as well. Making a good selection of short personal stories which achieve the aim to introduce that generation real situation to the viewer.