Unearth Your Hidden Gem →

In our second gem feature, photographer David, reveals how overcoming his own fears of connecting with others, has helped him unearth a hidden passion that serves a bigger purpose.

Projekt Glitter is on a mission to unearth all our hidden gems and help us sparkle sustainably with plant based glitter. 🌱

Stay tuned for our next gem release! In the meantime, sparkle from the inside-out with www.projektglitter.com  ✨ #unearthyourhiddengem

Creative Director Temi Hollist Rest Cinematography & Editing Rita Couto Camera operators Svea Immel, Masih Tajzai, Nickolas Menescal, Rita Couto Makeup Artist Inez Homeister Music CC-BY-3.0 Dream Jungle by Memeshift, Waikiki by Blackbird Blackbird Sound mix Jonny Zoum Motion graphics James Barry

Produced by Rita Couto Featuring Heart Chor – The Musical Powered by Projekt Glitter

Special thanks to Heart Chor, David Gauffin, Saskia Kolbach, Anna Schwarz, Nicolò Belli, Filip Süt Rutkowski, Danilo Timm, Kevin Klein, Emilia Kurylowicz, Teresa Marinho, Zirkus Mond, Yorck Studio, dBs Berlin

What's Your Hidden Gem? →

By the end of Spring, I caught up with Jeen who runs Projekt Glitter, a biodegradable glitter brand raising awareness on the environmental issue of micro plastics to a broader like minded audience, to brainstorm on a new collaboration. Jeen had started her brand three years before with the motto “sparkle sustainably“, when she noticed that all the fun wearing (traditional) glitter in parties and summer festivals was not that responsible after all.

I have actually met Jeen at the farewell party of Agora Collective, the community I had been part of, we were introduced by a friend who teamed up with her on a mission to glitter everyone around. Later on, when we met to brainstorm on a piece of branded content, we realised how much resources we already had just by sharing a common network. Until recently, Projekt Glitter has been sponsoring the amazing initiative of Heart Chor, a forty-member choir brought together by professional vocal coach and friend Danilo Timm, who turned amateurism to the level awesomeness. The stories of people who have joined the movement (of Projekt Glitter), who have been responsibly spreading joy with glitter were already at our reach, and when we found out that Heart Chor was ambitiously producing a musical performance in a circus, we decided to take over.

In the meantime, storyteller and talented peer Temi Hollist Rest jumped on board to draw a campaign, which would best represent the brand’s values, while featuring the stories that we wanted to tell. The outcome was quite simple: a series of 1 minute films each unearthing one’s hidden gem. A gateway to inspire and remind the viewer that once we are aware of ourselves, we can be aware of the world around us and… sparkle sustainably.

Creative Director Temi Hollist Rest Cinematography & Editing Rita Couto Camera operators Svea Immel, Masih Tajzai, Rita Couto Makeup Artist Inez Homeister Music CC-BY-3.0 Dream Jungle by Memeshift, Waikiki by Blackbird Blackbird Sound mix Jonny Zoum Motion graphics James Barry

Produced by Rita Couto Featuring Heart Chor – The Musical Powered by Projekt Glitter

Special thanks to Heart Chor, Saskia Kollbach, Elena Mika, Joice Biazoto, Filip Süt Rutkowski, Danilo Timm, Nickolas Menescal, Morgan Sully, Kevin Klein, Emilia Kurylowicz, Teresa Marinho, Zirkus Mond, Yorck Studio, dBs Berlin

Conan Osiris at Trauma bar

I snapped some photos on film at the Conan Osiris show at Trauma Bar for Berlinda Magazine.

Conan Osiris, Portugal’s new queer icon, is up for a genre combination extravaganza, mixing fado with digital kizomba, dancehall, Cape-verdean funaná, metal or hip hop. Conan, inspired by the Japanese anime series of the same name. Osiris, inspired by the Egyptian god. Together they form the artistic persona of Tiago Miranda, who is as complex and thought provoking as his way of making music. He is a phenomenon that grew huge in eulogistic press reviews and audience in Portugal since he released his last digital album “Adoro Bolos. He will perform for the first time in Berlin and it smells like Eurovision. (resident advisor)

Stream Switch at Hamburger Bahnhof

I’ve teamed up with Berlin-based artists Thea Reifler and Philipp Bergmann to promote their upcoming performance piece Stream Switch, premiering today the 3rd of January 2019 at Hamburger Bahnhof. The piece is part of the initiative VOLKSWAGEN ART 4 ALL , a performance series showcasing the work of multiple artists, taking place every first Thursday of the month from 16h to 20h.

During Stream Switch the performers move between the spaces, objects and visitors of the museum. Obeying imaginary physical laws, they work with their bodies against the gravitational pull of actual and fictional worlds – or allow themselves to fall. How do bodies communicate with their surroundings? With empathy? Violence? Tenderness? Consideration? How do they behave in the gravitational field of the museum? And which experiences do they take with them when they leave this space?

Philipp Bergmann and Thea Reifler work in the field of visual anthropology, visual arts and performance. In their works they use performance as a tool to create encounters in both hermetic situations and readymade settings. They have collaborated with and have shown their work at 3hd Festival Berlin, Museum Giersch, Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt, Transmediale Berlin, Museum of Natural History Bern, Sophiensaele Berlin, Oper Darmstadt and others.

Find the official event page here.

Space to Create feat. Frank Peroni

Over the summer I’ve teamed up with talented Storyteller and friend Temi Holist for another Space to Create production, this time featuring dBs Film Screen Acting alumni Frank Peroni. Space to Create is a series contextually focused, featuring dBs students and tutors on how Berlin influences their creative process and inspires their work. In the second episode of Space to Create series, we follow Frank as he talks about the inspiring journey of self-expression that led him to Berlin.

Catacoustic Flesh World Premiere

 Kiani Del Valle´s solo piece Catacoustic Flesh will be premiered today at the National Sawdust in NYC, headlining the evening at the Northside Festival.

This is Kiani´s first solo piece in which identities and layers of oneself are triggered, exploring the body as a new dimension where sound and movement are the predominant form of communication. The piece itself holds a cross-disciplinary collaborative work, with London/Berlin based music producer Leo Luchini and British costume designer Timothy Bouyez - Forge in the core team. 

To help expose this outstanding piece to an online audience, I have teamed up with my dearest friend and talented DOP Johan Planefeldt, to shoot a three-part teaser film.

If you are in NYC at the moment, make sure to check it out! Tickets are still available here >>> bit.ly/2qKOcoX

Teaser:
Direction and Cinematography by Johan Planefeldt
Gaffer Rita Couto
Make up Maria Boman
Editing Sander Houtkruijer

A Community of Thinkers and Heroes

 Building a community in our paradoxical society nowadays is gold. I mean a community of thinkers and heroes. People with whom you blossom along in the journey of setting your territory, shifting from stages in life where you feel either vulnerable or unbeatable. The most rewarding feeling in growing adult is to realize the privilege of sharing this cocooning process with people you are truly proud of - be them friends, family, colleagues or collaborators.

 Recently, Agora Collective (Mittelweg) closed its doors. This was the very first collective I encountered in Berlin and the base for the most meaningful relationships and collaborations I've developed, a network of makers and social healers. Agora definitely shaped a good part of my path in this city, and became the evidence that the act of gathering is as essential as eating or sleeping. I mean, who are we at the end of the day, with a million followers on our virtual profiles? These and other pattern behaviours in the web playground are taking over very simple notions of our basic needs and it scares the crap out of me. I find myself in a mental exercise trying to redefine what is in fact essential in the journey of self-growth, among social standards as fulfilling as junk food.

 When Agora closed its doors, I spent the following week with the feeling as if the carpet was taken off my feet, scanning the rituals and habits of the past five years, trying to give them a new home, only to realize that they can only be praised and cheered whenever we gather and inspire each other again.

To set our own territory means to become aware of what we built together in a like-minded room, a space whose coordinates are constantly redefined. Yesterday, while I joined a session between friends to get to know all about TOCA - the mission which Luter, Denis and Andre have been so excited about - I saw the magic taking place again and it reminded me of all what matters. 

The most inspiring thing I find about this project is that the creators of TOCA are willing to awake people's mindset on the long-term health consequences in the way we interact with our phones, based on information gathered by specialists in different fields who have made research on the side-effects when in contact with a smartphone, through think-alike summits, conferences and communities around the world. Awareness comes with education and the smartphone industries definitely played well on skipping that part of the homework.  

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TOCA is a start-up project initiated by three self-driven individuals who want to change the world. After realizing the health consequences of being in constant contact with our smartphones, they produced a sleeve that helps you have control on your phone (ah-ha?). Your phone is alive just as you are, but both operate under totally distinct systems. TOCA is basically a sleeve which cuts most of the signal from and to your phone once you put it in. It allows you to be offline whenever you want and should. 

These photos were taken during TOCA Friends, a gathering organized by the team to tell the story of TOCA to friends and passersby, to open discussion on topics related to the product and its purpose. The event took place at "Cafuné", Innstraße 32.

Find more about TOCA here.

The making of "The Wind"

I have shot the behind-the-scenes and interviewed the team behind "The Wind", a fiction film tackling the world of Somatics and the subconscious realm. The Making Of material was produced for funding purposes, in order to give continuity to the project and the topics it aims to explore on film. Johan Planefeldt who directed, shot and edited "The Wind" is an award-winning Swedish film maker and cinematographer with a background in fine arts. His films are recognised for having a strong visual language that explores physicality, embodiment and the alteration of states. 

The film was premiered May 2016 in Rausch Kino Berlin and is initiating its journey on film festivals. 

"Shelters" at the Hochschule Konstanz

Lately, I have collaborated with the Hochschule Konstanz University of Applied Sciences (HTWG) to document an ambitious semester long project aiming to integrate the new community of refugees and asylum seekers in our society with the young generation. SHELTERS is born out of a cooperation between the region Baden-Württemberg in Germany and the region Dohuk in North Iraq, directed to develop projects in the fields of Arquitecture and Design to find solutions for a better community with the community itself. Throughout the project term, men and women from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan were invited to take part on workshops at the University in order to provide them basic tools within an activity and share feedback with students and professors.

I was brought to the project at the second half of its term so I got to be in contact mostly with women at the sewing workshop. In a matter of days, I saw these women having a first contact with these tools - since most of them never worked or had an activity before - learning how does it work to simply follow the steps to produce something, until the point they are coming to us with their sewed rocks, bag packs or wallets, proud to show what they just made by their own. At the end of the project it was incredibly grateful to see our motto taking action and realize how creativity goes beyond any difference of gender, culture or race. 

The documented video was ordered for exposure and promotion purposes to reach further support for development of the project. Though further documented footage as interviews to the women and their stories told will be released at the official launch of SHELTERS´s website, by mid April.

Hochschule Konstanz x Jung von Matt GmbH

Official launch of IXDS labs

Last week was the official launch of IXDS labs which took place at the IXDS Berlin´s headquarters, having hosted over 500 attendees. I had much fun documenting it, while getting to know inside stories about how this new platform was born and where is it leading to. 

IXDS Labs is a platform with a new approach to innovation, where startup culture meets design and prototyping. It enables entrepreneurs and large organizations to adopt an agile mindset and establish startup culture within their teams. Get a first hand overview here:

Official launch of IXDS labs

For more info related check ixds.com/labs

AFFECT at Agora Collective

I have been collaborating with Agora Collective, an interdisciplinary project space in Berlin Neukölln, producing feedback videos as an overview of AFFECT Program 2015. AFFECT is supported by the EU Creative Europe Programme and consists of a 5-month-long program of five consecutive modules each led by an international artist, who invites participants to collectively explore a topic and develop a set of practices and research methodologies over the period of one month, hosted by Agora Collective. Get a first hand overview here:

AFFECT is currently accepting candidates for it´s 3rd Edition! For more info related check agoracollective.org/affect

Like Knows Like

I found this online project about a year ago, at a time when I was brainstorming on a documentary series in Berlin, an independent project I’ve started. Like Knows Like is made of dutch filmmaker Bas Berkhout and photographer Marije Kuiper who decided to make personal short-documentaries about people they admire, talents of the digital world. The clear format and the visual language of their films is what strikes me, while getting to know each protagonist behind their work through very simple questions. Here is one of my favs:

For more info related check Like Knows Like