Meredith, Ruben and I, Bálint, are friends in life. We have realized that all of us have a true loving relationship with our grandmothers; and what turns this fact into a documentary concept, is that a British, a German and a Hungarian perspective can be shown, and that we speak about history and life in an unorthodox way – and the grandmother-grandson connection verifies this approach. Instead of the classical narrative, the artistic choice is to give a guide in the prologue to the viewer in a sense how they should perceive the followings, instead of being straight to the point of what they are going to see. The film consists of two sections: one investigates the grandmothers lives throughout WW2 and the Cold War. The other gives an insight of their approach of their love life and their perception of death. Us, the grandsons give subjective comments about our grandmothers, even if they present, knowing that they won’t understand us in spite of that we speak the same language. We are already at a stage in our lives when we are mature enough to ask difficult questions while our grandmothers are still young enough to provide us with answers.

Our film is a road trip: a real and a symbolic journey

Granny Project’s cinematographic approach is centred around an unmediated, deeply intimate and personal portrayal of a grandsons gaze. It is born from lo-fi necessity as it began before it really knew what it was to become. It is a multi format largely self shot portrayal of the grandmother-grandson relationship, shot on miniDV, HDV, 4K, iPhone and Skype. It is shot primarily by the grandsons and the camera is very much a character within the film, it is passed around, hung out of cars, bolted to wheelchairs and left on the floor to simply observe and so has a playful collage based aesthetic to it. As the grandmothers grow older the camera acknowledges their fragility as they recollect their lives, it drifts in and out of focus as the viewer moves between reality and memory. The forte of this material lies in the stories retold by the main characters along with the associated emotions and inarguable authenticity of the situations they describe. We would like to preserve the raw and immediate nature of the material collected so far and continue to develop the collage nature of the film.

Bálint Révész
Granny Project