Dear friends, sorry for having been absent for a while. I sometimes doubt it’s worthwhile spending much energy on this project, which means directing, filming, meticulously editing and translating, writing, publishing, promoting, only to draw so little attention. Seventy-six subscribers to date… despite rave reviews from the happy few who decided to press “play.” In any case, my heartfelt gratitude to all seventy-six of you for your interest! This particular film was especially tedious to translate until it was supervised by Akhtar Akhgar, thank you, brother!
To my handful of fans: proactively liking, sharing and subscribing is super important, as:
it shows support, which motivates me to continue
it helps my little bottles thrown into the ocean of the web reach new shores. There are people on those shores who will be happy to discover my little films in those little bottles. Do them a favor. All the more so since this Substack is totally free, generating no income. More on sharing below.
Now, you can take a relaxing, quiet three-minute break, and, preferably on a good screen, meet Bakhtiar.
While I was supposed to film someone else who didn’t show up, Bakhtiar was quietly sitting in this Geneva square. So I turned to him and offered to film him, which he accepted without a moment’s hesitation. This always feels extraordinary, and it happens almost every time I meet a stranger with my camera. Thank you, Bakhtiar.
That is how Bakhtiar spontaneously started singing, then ended up telling me, and therefore all of us, that his body contains bomb fragments as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
➤ More auto-translated languages via YouTube—desktop only.
The video is part of the Strangers.Now film series.
Films and texts © Eric Vander Borght – www.ericvan.com – linktr.ee/vanderbo
I’m available for film and photography projects.
(Independent filmmaking, real-life storytelling, and more).
Let’s get in touch
or comment below
➤ If you think Strangers.Now is worthy of attention, please share, like, and engage widely! Only your sharing and that of your friends can bring the films to life, that is by building lively connections with viewers. They need your creative involvement, preferably in person: word of mouth is a good way to support a project that is entirely self-funded.
Note: The subjects of the films usually speak their mother tongue or a language they feel comfortable with: we believe that embracing diverse forms of expression makes the world a richer place. On YouTube, English subtitles can be activated via the relevant icon, and automatic translation into many languages (desktop only) is accessible through the gear icon in the bottom-right corner of the videos (see below).
The YouTube playlist: www.strangers.tube
Farsi to English translation of this particular film was supervised with the gracious help of Akhtar Akhgar.
Music by Jérôme Chauvel and Liécio Rodriguez, sourced from Pixabay and used under a royalty-free license.
Films, Human-Made | Human stories through independent filmmaking | www.ericvan.com
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