Meet the team behind 'The Hertica Home.' Find out what the film is about, why it was made and why audiences should watch it by clicking play on the video below:
Filmmakers - Morgan Moore, Gwyneth Tabil, Ivy Ruobing He, Ellen Conlan Ellis, Nicola Okezie
Category – Youth, Resistance, Freedom
Available to Watch – Wednesday 3 June 2020
Duration – 7 minutes
Country – UK/ Kosovo
Year – 2020
Synopsis: 'The Hertica Home' is a short 3D interactive documentary that uses testimony to explore connections between space and memory by focusing upon the the Sami Frasheri gymnasium faculty in the Hertica Family home, a School House in Prishtina, Kosovo in the 1990s. This short piece developed by Bournemouth University Computer Animation students and coordinated by Dr. Paula Callus and uses the Unreal gaming engine, CGI and interviews and found sounds to develop fragmentary and non-relational impressions of this place. It bears no accuracy to the spaces in the real Hertica family house, but instead is designed to evoke a sense of a dreamscape, or memory, that is partial in its rendition. Students listened to different accounts, and identified particular themes that could be explored through objects as the vehicle that is used to carry stories. From cushions in class rooms, to stacked shoes, posters of bands, and newspaper cuttings. They use these objects to structure the experience, that is designed to be different each time as you navigate through spaces in a surrealistic manner. This space is not occupied by characters or people and yet it is intended to convey a sense of the people that went to this school, lived in this house, come from Prishtina.
More Information About the Film and Project:
The Hertica Home' emerges from ongoing creative investigations around space, memory and history through the use of computer generated imagery and animation with young people in the UK and Kosovo. This 3D interactive piece re-presents the Hertica home in Prishtina: a family house which became a school to the Sami Frasheri gymnasium faculty in the 1990s for Kosovar Albanian students. It is a small part of a larger interactive piece of work that is being developed by Bournemouth University animation students (co-ordinated by Dr Paula Callus), in collaboration with Erasmus students from the University of Prishtina and Dr, Linda Gusia (PI of Making the Museum of Education CtS), that will culminate in an installation piece. It is presented here as recording of a walk-through from the user's perspective, but is intended to be experienced interactively.
The conversations and testimonies between past and present students in Kosovo and the UK-based animators, formed the basis of this surrealistic space. It is designed to evoke a dreamscape that is partial in its rendition offering clues to parts of the stories that surround this building and its function in different times: as home, school, derelict building and future museum. Students identified threads from past, present and future imaginings and used these to think about connections between personal and collective memory and physical spaces. As an experience the space is designed to randomly generate different sequences for the rooms so that each time the player enters the house, their experience is unique - this is something which the short film is not able to capture in its entirety. The intention here was to allude to the fragmentary nature of memory and narrative, and the possibilities that arise through non-linear structures.