#seNiorStakeover

Project includes the digital narrative which shows how our older citizens dealt with isolation and curfew during the state of emergency, as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Ten seniors from Novi Sad, most of whom are included in the activities of the Novi Sad Volunteering Service through series of drama workshops, created their own short stories regarding isolation.

‘They tried to look less than 65 so that they could at least get some fresh air. They would go out wearing vibrant colours, big sunglasses and their hair down. Dragan couldn’t stand being in his flat anymore, so he would sit in his car in front of the building, listening to music and playing the guitar. The police was watching him, but he didn’t care, he wasn’t disrespecting the Prohibition on Movement,’ this is just one part of the whole story of the #seNiorStakeover project, which the audience will have a chance to see as a short film, on the Facebook page of Cultural Station on the International Day of Older Persons – 1 October

https://www.facebook.com/kulturnestanice/videos/831896130880830

Author Branka Bajić about the project: The first phase of the project, before the very shooting, included a series of drama workshops with a group of seniors. The aim of the workshops was for seniors and other participants in the project to meet among themselves and build trust, create everyone’s stories, as well as practice basic public speech and performance. During that phase, we heard the stories and discovered locations for filming each story. We were filming some of them in their flats, some in weekend houses, and some in their cars. We wanted to emphasise the huge difference of being locked in a house with a big yard in Fruška Gora and being locked in a top-floor flat in the middle of the city. In gerontology centres, people had been locked up for months. This group of seniors, all members of the Cultural-Artistic Seniors Society, already have experience regarding public appearances so they weren’t nervous or felt the need to go over scripts and stories many times. It seemed like it was very important to them that someone showed interest and asked them to publicly speak about this topic and share tiny part of their private lives”.

The production was realized with The Cultural Corner “Nurturing Tradition in Vojvodina” Association. The project was financed by the “Novi Sad – European Capital of Culture” Foundation.