Fotoshooting in cold Berlin

On what makes one warm: The project is going on, I guess, but it is hard to tell, being in a bubble. My colleagues elswhere, in other parts of Berlin and in other parts of Europe are researching and slowly preparing the material out of which we will eventually make a film.

In Berlin, now a while ago, on a cold december day filled with wet snow, wind and fog, we made a photoshooting session out in the open. All the crew running out of the café, just for a few minutes, freezing and screaming, in order to shoot a few photos in those heavy conditions. A miraculous photosession it was.  The shooting day started with some demotivating minutes while faced with the blizzard around us. But it ended as one of those rare moments of passionate teamwork and almost childish enthusiasm about what we are doing as well as some excellent spontaneously produced output. It felt like we were a mixture between a rugby team, going through mud and pain for an unlikely touchdown and a bunch of kids immersed into their heroic actions in the sandbox.

Today, I am again in my solo bubble, away from both of my teams, geographically dislocated from the Slovenians and organisationally separated from the Germans. Berlin is as sunny and warm as never before on a winter day, but colder than a blizzard when there are no rugby mates, no kids to play with. Just a plain, dull computer screen.

Doing stuff together, for the others, in front of the others. Underneath all reasons, conceptual, ethical, financial or any other grounds we might find to engage with a project, in the bottom line it is doing stuff together – I believe – why any one of us does the thing called work.

Sonja Vilc lives in Berlin and is also actress of "Kolektiv Narobov" (Ljubljana, Slovenia). Here she talkes about the fotoshoot in Winter.