De Mains Locales: a documentary for and by the young people of the department

For 5 years now, KMM productions has been implementing an annual image education project with the La Trame association as part of the Passeurs d'Images scheme. Thus each year the MJC de Puivert and KMM productions set up an audiovisual creation project in which young people from the region will be able to participate and learn each stage of the production of a film. They will be accompanied in particular by professionals in the field while having great creative freedom.

It is in particular thanks to the MJC of Puivert that this project can see the light of day, indeed it is through this one that we can organize the financing, the meetings with the young people and the communication around the project.

The latest is the documentary “De mains Locales”, a 35-minute report with the ambition of promoting and highlighting positive initiatives in the upper Aude valley. For this, the youth team looked at 5 associations or organizations that offer an alternative to the classic system that wants to be more respectful of the environment and the individual.

We thus find:

- Cap Heol (Food autonomy, education) An association created in 2005 in Brittany and moved to Aude in Esperaza in 2017 takes care of a large arable land in which it develops plant and nature education and wants harmonize the relationship between man and his Forest Garden project

- La Trame: An association located in Limoux which develops a local carpooling network called Mobil’Aude.

- The FabLab and the Acilab of Limoux which allows the reintegration of people and offers a place of experimentation and repair open to all.

- Le Souriant, a local currency that promotes a short circuit and at the same time finances more ecological and ethical projects.

- La Claranda, a cultural association that organizes several cultural and musical events in the Haute Vallée de l'Aude.

The project began during the school holidays, with a documentary awareness workshop by viewing examples selected by Lila Pasco as well as a first handling of the material learning to use a camera and a microphone under the supervision by Kevin Morgan Major.

The 2nd workshop to get started with the equipment as well as the solution journalism workshop to learn the tricks of the journalist trade with Aurélien Culat and the 1st shoot with Aurélien who was present to help young people and facilitate interviews.

The next day we did the script writing workshop with Bridget Holding and we continued filming and started editing over several sessions.

  A radio broadcast on Radio Ballade was made live to announce the start of the project and thus serve as an introduction to the film.

For some young people, it was the first time they went live on the radio and made a medium-length film of this magnitude. The team included 9 young people aged 17 to 25 of 6 different nationalities (German, Kurdish, English, American, Scottish and French) on a regular basis, not to mention those who came from time to time. Like its heterogeneous team, we wanted to produce the documentary in French and English so that it could reach a wider audience.

Thanks to the participation of our two speakers, we were able to bring knowledge (Lila Pasco) and methodology (Aurélien Culat) to the youth team. So we were able to see different examples of documentaries with Lila, herself a director located in Ariège, and discuss different examples. Finally Aurélien, journalist and creator of a solutions media in the Aude, there to share his experience and his approach in his work as a journalist. Without forgetting Bridget Holding who led the scriptwriting workshop in order to shape the medium-length film.

Finally, De Mains Locales had the chance to be screened in the Quillan cinema in front of an audience of young people from the project, accompanied by Kevin Morgan Major, who were able to give an on-the-spot feedback and discuss the questions of its production. The film was subsequently adapted to serve the different associations it covered.