Short PortraitMeetKinoMobil by MPower e.V.
MeetKinoMobil provides young women in Berlin’s shared accommodation with a mobile cinema, giving them access to art and culture through the medium of film. In film workshops with professional filmmakers, the participants can actively participate in film and contribute with their biographies as well as their ideas about identity and a society in which they want to live in. The films will be shown at various locations, probably in the shared accommodation, in the KinoKiste Marzahn-Hellersdorf and in the summer months outside in an open-air format.
“MeetKinoMobil creates places for exchange and uses cultural (film) education as a method to empower. Professional filmmakers support the young women, give impulses and can be ‘role models’ for them. The young women are empowered by technically and creatively enabling them to express themselves on film. They are encouraged to take their future into their own hands and become visible in the truest sense of the word”, says the jury.
3 new questions to… Mervete Bobaj, Founder and Board Member of MPower
Through the support of our project MEETkino mobil, girls* and young women* with refugee biographies were given a space to meet and exchange in order to watch films together that deal with their life worlds and realities and in which women tell and direct the stories. Some of the participants have been taught the technical and artistic means of filmmaking by professional filmmakers in workshops and pass these on to their peers and younger people in a self-organised way. A small group continues to meet regularly, go to the cinema together, watch films and exchange ideas to further develop the project and keep it alive.
The award has helped to open up cultural access for young women* affected by racism and discrimination and to provide them with artistic means to express their issues so that they can reach stages and audiences themselves.
Some of the young women* are very inspired by the project experience and want to continue developing ideas with a view to gender-sensitive, racism-critical girls* work. They are currently organising themselves and want to use the networks they have built up to reach more young women.
3 questions to… Mervete Bobaj, Founder and Board Member of MPower
Young women get to know films made by women and the filmmakers. They take part in workshops, create their own film works and thus become narrators of the reality of their lives.
The prize money will be used to pay fees to the artists/filmmakers, multipliers and curators, as well as to design and print flyers, purchase materials (e.g. screens, beamers, loudspeakers, cables) and rent films.
I would like to see more diversity in the cultural sector in Germany.