In 2019, Living Legends arrives in France!

Tell me a story that someone told you and that you would tell your grandchildren.

Living Legends is a project where oral culture interacts with digital culture. It focuses on collecting and illustrating the oral history of communities, focusing on the knowledge, myths and traditions preserved by grandparents. These collected data are upgraded by the young people of the territory, thanks to animation techniques.

Origin of Living Legends:

The first edition took place in 2017. An international team of directors and educators from Latin America and Europe travelled together to visit communities in Ecuador, Colombia, Germany and Estonia, hosting more than 12 workshops in which 300 young people were trained and 40 qualitative animated short films were produced. A platform has been designed to host these short films and to share the methodology with anyone who wants to be part of the Living Legends family.

Today the association La Cinta corta (Ecuador) extends the project to other countries with new partners and collaborators.

This year, Le Tamis association will host the project in France, at Marseille.

Why?

The oral tradition is threatened. In some places it is almost non-existent and in others it tends to be lost quickly. If oral tradition is lost, the cultural identity and ancestral wisdom of communities will be lost for future generations. Living Legends, memories in motion, wants to develop empathy by allowing you to discover other cultures through oral tradition. In our workshops we teach young people the importance of culture, memory, diversity and identity, while encouraging responsible and creative use of new technologies.

How?

Young people will participate in a workshop where elders from their community are invited to share oral histories, ancestral knowledge, myths and legends. With this material, the young participants create animated short films which are then showed free of charge to the audience during screenings in the communities themselves and then to the world via an interactive web platform.

Today, a large proportion of young people use smartphones on a daily basis. Without knowing it, they have in their hand a precious tool to make small films. Through this project, we hope to encourage the appropriation of these tools for the benefit of their own creativity.

By discovering traditional animation techniques (creation of sets, and characters, voices, sound effects, etc.) and by initiating to the Motion Stop technics, participants will bring the stories told by elders to life in a direct and concrete way. Through their imagination and hands, they will preserve the legends of the past.

For the first time, in 2019, Living Legends come to France at Marseille!

For more than 2,600 years, Marseille has been the focus of attention. Over the centuries, its history has been built, leaving in the soil, in the stone, in the texts and in the memories traces of its past. In the heart of this city, we will meet those who know its secrets, its stories, its legends.

During this first French edition, we will invite ourselves in two neighborhoods and their community: Belsunce and l'Estaque (1st and 13th arrondissements).

Between marine tradition, Middle Eastern legends, memories of the great hours of Music Hall, and family tales of Provence, we will be surprised by the human wealth of these neighborhoods, to be able to preserve a living intangible heritage.

By the way, who are we?

Living Legends brings together a team of professionals and volunteers filmmakers, anthropologists, cultural producers, pedagogs and socio-cultural workshop leaders from different countries who believe in art, audiovisual and oral traditions as vectors of links and social transformation.

3 steps to create a transmission:

STEP 1: Preparation

3 foreign tutors (Ecuadorian and Argentinian) who have already participated in the Living Legends workshops, guarantor of the animation and transmission of the methodology will arrive in France and be welcomed by the French team.

They will train a doze local professionals (anthropologists, animators, or educators) in the Living Legends process to enable them in turn to facilitate the workshops and participate in the development of Living Legends.

STEP 2: Animation

Two one-week workshops will be held in the neighbourhoods of Belsunce and the Estaque in Marseille.

An international team of professionals will supervise some 40 young people.

Each workshop takes place in the following way: awareness of the oral tradition, training in audiovisual and stop motion techniques, filmed interviews of the elderly, realization of the film based on the story told.

STEP 3: Celebrative restitution

Short films will be shown in each neighbourhood first with the participants and finally more widely for everyone.

The short films will then be broadcast on the website to add to all the existing films.

Expected Results:

6 to 8 stories of Marseille neighbourhoods will be saved, through 6 to 8 short films in Stop Motion
Sensitizing communities to the richness and fragility of their oral memory and the need to preserve it
Training of 40 young people in animation cinema and audiovisual techniques
Training of 10 local new tutors who will in turn be able to train other people to facilitate the Living Legends workshops
Creation of a podcast audio series, a photo retrospective, plastic sets and a video Making off to tell the French experience
A free educational manual to share with all the partner associations so that they in turn realize the project and collect other stories.
Two festive events to present the movies to the communities and to encourage the participants to share their experience.

Living Legends, Mémoire en mouvement