The European Grandma Project

The film will be presented with Alenka Maly (filmmaker) and Nora Gumpenberger (producer) present. They will talk about the origins and the development of the project.

Austrian film director Alenka Maly started the European Oral History film project The European Grandma Project In 2015 she launched a European-wide call and found eight like-minded filmmakers, who created portraits of their grandmothers in parallel to one another in Israel, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Bulgaria, Russia, England, Turkey and Austria. These women, born in the 20s and early 30s of the last century, tell their filmmaking granddaughters about war, political upheavals, love, and everyday life in their time in Europe. Relying on a large dose of humour and closeness that is impossible to feign without genuine intimacy, The European Grandma Project is not a mere compilation of nine encounters between granddaughters and their grandmothers, but also a poetic 20th-century history book. All these women and their stories couldn’t differ more and at the same time their lives and messages are very much alike. The European Grandma Project achieves the sense of togetherness that comes with the realization that, despite all our cultural differences, we are all in many ways actually quite similar. A film that Europe and the world needs in times like these.

Co-sponsored by Hispanic and Italian Studies, Germanic Studies, French and Francophone Studies, Moving Image Arts, and the Office of International Affairs

https://lcsl.uic.edu/events/the-european-grandma-project/