Call for Videos - "The Right to Freedom of Artistic Expression and Creation"

Working group on Arts Rights and Justice, EU Access to Culture Civil Society Platform / Fonds Roberto Cimetta,
27 July 2013, International

The Working group on Arts Rights and Justice of the EU Access to Culture Civil Society Platform wishes to underline the importance of the UN special report “The Right to Freedom of Artistic Expression and Creation” during a meeting with members of the European Parliament (Human Rights, Culture and other Parliamentary Committees) as well as diverse representatives of the European Commission. This meeting is scheduled to take place early October 2013 in Brussels. The issues dealt with in the report are censorship (political and religious), safe havens for refugees and at risk artists, access to artistic expression for all minorities, freedom of movement, assembly, use of public space...
 
During the meeting we would like to offer artists the opportunity to make their voice heard particularly those who are confronted with one or more of these issues in their day-to-day practice, and/or living and working under conditions of restriction or risk.
 
You can make your voice heard by sending us a two minute video that explains your personal situation, or the situation in your country or region.
 
Your first audience will be the above-mentioned politicians and representatives of the EU Commission.
We may contact you to ask your permission to diffuse your statement through other channels, but we will never do so without your explicit consent.
 
Video guidelines

  • No more than 2 minutes in length.
  • If you feel safe to do so, please tell your name, otherwise use a nickname.
  • Tell us from which country/region you are, again if you feel safe to do so.
  • Give a clear statement about the situation in your country/region or your personal experience with the issue of freedom of expression.
  • You can choose to take a close up of a talking head, to visualise your statement in drawings, cartoons, an artwork … or to make a two minutes documentary.
  •  Be sure of good audio quality and a clearly spoken or written message.
  • Give your statement in English or take care of subtitles in English.
  • Be sure of good image quality and that the format is ready for screening (in the sense that it doesn't need to be edited). We would like to make a selection of the videos and screen them one after the other.  

Send your video via www.wetransfer.com to an exclusive email account that the European Academy of Yuste Foundation (European Access to Culture Platform Member) has opened for this: [email protected]. Please send it by 9th September 2013. Videos will be kept in this server for privacy. The procedure is quite easy.
 
To submit your video you just have to go to www.wetransfer.com.  In the menu that appears to the left add the file to be sent, the email where it has to be sent: [email protected]. Add also your own email address and a short message. This message should include
1) the title 'Video for presentation of "The Right to Freedom of Artistic Expression and Creation" UN Report',
2) the name of the organization and person sending it,
3) contact details
4) any other relevant information.
 
You can submit your video in a variety of formats as it allows to send up to 2Gb (NB: 2Gb is really for a high definition movie, so for a 2 minutes video you just need a few Mbs). We can receive and screen different formats (".avi", ".mp4", ".wma", ".mpeg1" to be screened through a beemer or for the web ".flv").

To read the UN special report “The Right to Freedom of Artistic Expression and Creation”, see the IFACCA publications listing here or access the report directly on the UN website.

http://www.access-to-culture.eu/accesstoculture/14/calendar/?calendar_id=51