THE RHYTHM OF OUR DREAMS A Proposal for an Applied Visual Anthropology

PART V

COMMUNITY FILM-MAKINGAND EMPOWERMENT

Chapter 11

THE RHYTHM OF OUR DREAMSA Proposal for an Applied Visual Anthropology

Ana Martínez Pérez

FIGURE 11.1TO BE SUPPLIED

Figure 11.1 A still image from the documentary video The Rhythm Of Our Dreams.© A Buen Común 2002.

“As we dream we love,As we love we live,As we live we die.I won’t say yes or noBut what I will say is that there is no heat without fire”.(Carlos Cano, singer songwriter).

I would like the people who don’t believe in us to see this documentary.(Manoli, protagonist of The Rhythm of Our Dreams).

The Rhythm of Our Dreams as Applied Visual Anthropology

The documentary video The Rhythm of Our Dreams (Al Compás de LosSueños) was developed in Córdoba, Spain, in 2002. Above I quote Manoli,one of the film’s protagonists. Her words encapsulate how approachesfrom visual anthropology and social work in marginalized areas werecombined in this project: we applied visual anthropology methods to rep-resent the experienced realities of excluded people and their social work-ers. The project was requested by the local government Department ofYouth, Women and Employment and the Association of Social WorkersEncuentro en la Calle (Street Encounter), which has worked in the poorestareas in Córdoba for over a decade. It was produced in collaboration withA Buen Común, a multidisciplinary group of social researchers (anthro-pologists, psychologists and teachers) and film-makers. The project aimedto produce a documentary film that would generate awareness of socialexclusion and its causes and show how it is being tackled by Encuentro enla Calle. However this was not simply a film production project. Rather itconstituted a joint and collaborative experience of intervention in sociallyexcluded areas and research using audiovisual media, developed by aninterdisciplinary group of professionals from the social sciences (anthro-pology, psychology, education, social work) and audiovisual media.

In this chapter, writing as a social and visual anthropologist and a mem-ber of A Buen Común, I explain how we constructed a model for multi-disciplinary intervention, which both responded to our differing aims as agroup of diverse professionals and remained focused on the main task ofmaking an ethnological documentary. We responded to Encuentro en laCalle’s request that we should make the film by developing a method-ological device halfway between applied anthropology and visual ethnog-raphy. We believe the work plan developed for The Rhythm of Our Dreamscould be transferred and adequately implemented in other projects withsimilar objectives. Like all integrated models, by default the interconnect-edness of the perspectives that constitute it optimize the tool’s versatility.

232 | ANA MARTÍNEZ PÉREZ

Approaching Social Intervention

Like many projects in applied anthropology our work involved both inter-disciplinary collaboration and working closely with the ‘client’ (see Pink2005). In such contexts collaboration also means gaining a clear under-standing of the definitions and motivations of the other parties, and thiswas fundamental to our approach. At the beginning of the project we (thesocial researchers) met with the social workers and educators fromEncuentro en la Calle to discuss common themes in our approaches tosocial intervention.

Our first point of contact focused on the nature of our fieldworkencounters. We were able to synthesize our approaches into a methodwhich both allowed the social workers to verbalize their work ethic of‘being without intruding’ and was reminiscent of the old ethnographicphilosophy (which is still viable today) of ‘being there as witnesses of theother’s gaze’. ‘Being without intruding’ corresponds with the ethno-graphic practice of turning fieldwork interactions into a way of life. Byestablishing a shared approach focused on the commonalities in our exist-ing fieldwork practices we were able to fulfil the objectives that informsocial science research and the social workers’ proposed intervention.

Second, we shared the social workers’ understanding of social exclu-sion; as referring to people’s inability to access economic resources andparticipate in different areas of city life: employment, housing, education,health, etc. We began with a definition of social exclusion as, on the onehand an element of an incomplete self-identity, and on the other hand apractical inability to access the normal resources the establishment makesavailable to the general public. We refused to blame the victims of exclu-sion for their own situation – as those who cannot empathize with thereality of the excluded ‘other’ often do. With these definitions in mind thedocumentary opens with images of the symbolic centre of Córdoba, thePatio de los Naranjos of the historic Mesquita (Mosque)1 and the words ofthe president of the Andaluz Human Rights Association: ‘The waterreaches all the orange trees equally. If we translate water into social justiceit becomes housing, employment, education. When the water is spread outequally no orange tree rots; no person would break down causing socialconflict. When the water does not reach the tree the problem is not with thetree itself, which smells, but with the water that never got there’. Audiovi-sual media, particularly video, were perfect for representing this vision ofequality/inequality. Video allowed us to produce and reproduce a seriesof images that created a polyphonic representation of people who live inareas of exclusion, and of their dreams. This provided us with a basis fordeveloping awareness and reflection among the general public and,because we made it our objective to reveal the reality of social exclusion,for other social workers and researchers the documentary demonstrates anovel form of intervention. While our use of ethnographic methods and

The Rhythm of Our Dreams | 233

audiovisual media were fundamental to the success of the project, themutual vision, approaches and goals we shared with the social workers,educators and media professionals were equally important in producing ashared context for our interactions. The setting where the events wouldunfold was also familiar: A Buen Común2 had already filmed one of ourethnographic documentaries (Mujeres Invisibles 2000) in Córdoba and hadmade two other films in Andalucia (A Buen Común 1999; The Skin of theMountain, 2002). Some members of the team are Andalucians and for therest of us Andalucia is an important point of reference.

The concept of the ‘street’ used by the social workers represents theirdaily activities in a way that makes their social intervention very ethno-graphic. For people in situations of risk or social exclusion the street iswhere they learn diverse lessons: both good and bad. There is a place foreverything on the street. One of the social workers told us: ‘When I gethome at night, after a day’s work, I look at my shoes, if they are dirty andfull of mud I know I’ve done a good job, my job is not sitting behind a deskin an office and filling out forms, my job is on the street’ (Q: an educatorfrom Encuentro en la Calle). They are involved with excluded people onan everyday level in a way that has parallels with the way we do ethnog-raphy. The metaphor Q used to describe her/his work was so powerfulboth denotatively and cognitively that it has fed back into my teachingpractice – I have successfully used it to inspire students starting their ownethnographic fieldwork.

From a macro-sociological point of view, the social workers’ objective isto sensitize a society that constantly turns its back on social exclusion. Tounderstand their brief, both practically and ideologically, it is useful toconsider how they understand how their work fits into a wider context.They typify situations of social exclusion with which we live by examiningthe comparative relationship between notions of First and Third World ordeveloping countries, and those of First and Fourth World3. Encuentro enla Calle believes the poverty that is closest to us remains invisible to thegeneral public while in contrast we sometimes represent marginalizedpeople in other latitudes as worthy of receiving help. The following com-parative table (Table 11.1) illustrates how our ethnocentric vision of thedeveloped world defines the attributes of the people belonging to each ofthese spheres.


According to the ideology of Encuentro en la Calle, we might rectify theinjustices suffered by Fourth World groups through local action thatacknowledges this global situation. Like anthropological research, suchlocal action does not intrude on, but respects, the vision of the individualswith whom one is working. The social workers who appear in this docu-mentary believe that integration is a dialectic relationship between two cul-turally and socioeconomically different communities. The bond betweenthe two groups – the excluded and the street educators – should be estab-lished according to principles of equality and not ethnocentricity. Theirstarting point for any type of social intervention could well head up anapplied anthropological manual, it reads as follows: ‘We wish to bringtogether the emotional and the educational, the professionals and the vol-unteers, we want to be on the street without intruding and intrude in theinstitutions who, more often than not, want to bring in guidelines which arefar from the reality of the problems and the daily life of those areas in exclu-sion. We are interested in a model of intervention where people are impor-tant. A world which in the majority of cases is completely shattered butwhich, on the other hand, is always worthy of being put back together’.

As such our work with Encuentro en la Calle was based on a series ofcommonalities that we were able to establish between social science andsocial work: a nonintrusive ‘ethnographic’ approach to working with oth-ers that respects their ways of being and attempts to live their everydaylives with them; a shared understanding social inequalities, exclusion andits causes; and a shared vision of using audiovisual media as a means ofbringing these issues to a wider public. Establishing and working withshared understandings was also continuous throughout the whole film-making process. This was embedded in the way we made The Rhythm ofOur Dreams by combining three strands of work. First, the work of theeducators from Encuentro en la Calle provided us with the context for thestory. Both the educators and the people at risk of, or in a situation of,exclusion were to be the main characters in the documentary. Second, thedocumentary makers and the audiovisual experts were responsible for


First World Third World Fourth World

Visible Becoming visible Invisible

Individualistic Group (race, country) Group (family, area)

Responsible for Not responsible and victim Responsible for their achievements of the economic system economic and social

situation

With opportunities Worthy to receive help Given no help or opportunities

Listened to/ and Listened to/ but have no Not listened to/ have no have a say, humans say, humanized say, dehumanised

Table 11.1

developing a film narrative that would appeal to the greatest possible pub-lic. Third, the scriptwriters concentrated on creating the hinges that con-nect the different interests involved in the project. Their role was vital infacilitating the processes through which the different parties came tounderstand one another’s perspectives and negotiated meanings betweenthemselves to produce a film that was not distorted by the interests of anyone party. In fact the aims and objectives of The Rhythm of Our Dreamswere linked more to the intersection of perspectives which occurs duringthe film-making process, than to the film as product (see van. Dienderen,this volume for a similar approach).

Aims and Objectives

In this section I discuss the proposal Encuentro en la Calle and the Depart-ment of Youth, Women and Employment made to us in autumn 2001 andthe way this informed the development of our shared project. The objec-tives of these organizations were two-fold. First they wanted to demon-strate an alternative form of social work practice through participation inmarginalized urban areas. Second they wanted to use the documentary toraise awareness and produce empathy amongst the wider populationwhich has no contact with this social reality. Faced with this dual objectivewe needed a complex device, which responded to both approaches. Todevelop this we drew from both applied and visual anthropology in waythat mirrored the social worker’s objectives:

• As applied anthropologists we aimed to promote a form of social inter-vention which brings resources to people living in marginalized con-texts, rather than these groups having to leave their surroundings andsearch for resources within the depths of the public administration;

• As visual anthropologists we aimed to both divulge a reality totallyunknown to the majority of the population and present a form of socialintervention to professionals who specialize in areas of exclusion.

Alongside the ethnographic documentary we also proposed to carry outpersonal development workshops for those who featured in the film. Ourproposal was accepted and the project was carried out in 2002. As it was aninterdisciplinary project, below I discuss the different perspectives thatinformed it.

In the context of Spanish municipal politics in a city of more than 300,000inhabitants, it is significant that issues related to social exclusion are, gener-ally, excluded from the agenda. The people that live in the poorer areas of ourcities do not usually participate in city life. They are not even involved in theelectoral process. They live on the periphery of urban life and are notincluded in statistics. The organizations that work in areas of social exclu-sion are sustained by municipal funds and/ or by subsidies given by other


public bodies, which subcontract different social interventions. In this con-text two types of social work tend to be practiced. The first is bureaucraticand administrative. Here associations periodically apply for help to covercertain needs, only in part and for a limited amount of time. The secondentails complete and intensive intervention in collaboration with the ‘bene-ficiaries’. This is much more costly but very effective in producing profoundsocial transformation. The associations or groups that practice these lattertypes of intervention are in the minority because it is much more compli-cated to apply. Not least because they need to transfer their infrastructure tothe areas of exclusion; they must leave their offices to work on the street andintegrate with the local people they seek to support. The work practices ofEncuentro en la Calle provide a good example of this method.

The objectives of The Rhythm of Our Dreams were based on the idea thatto confront marginalization (or any situation of social conflict) the twoparties involved need to arrive at a level of mutual understanding. Tomake this possible we needed to offer alternative means of communicationthat would draw together these two understandings of the world. Oneaim was to make the general public aware of the situation of those wholive in exclusion. We were addressing a large public and, above all, a sec-tor of that public who, while ascribing to a politically correct discourse,fails to recognize that the excluded are victims of the contemporary socioe-conomic, political and cultural climate. They thus effectively blame theexcluded for their own condition. To confront this the documentary pre-sents a series of people from marginalized areas of Córdoba, who havestruggled to escape from marginalization. These people work for agenciesthat support re-integration into society through employment. Their verywork centres on the inclusion of those who live, as they once did, at risk ofor in a situation of, exclusion. Our second aim was to illustrate how a spe-cific form of social work was undertaken with these people. To achieve thisthe Encuentro en la Calle educators are also characters in this documen-tary: who better to tell one’s own story but oneself – the excluded – andwho better to narrate the process of insertion and integration into nor-malised society than a direct witness – the social workers.

As applied anthropologists we shared these aims. First, that people andgroups living in areas of exclusion in Córdoba should gain easier access tothe resources which society has to offer, as such to decrease their needs.Second, that the wealthier middle classes should understand and acceptthe difference between these two worlds, however slight it may be. Thepublic we wished to reach still ascribes to the idea that we all enter theworld with equal potential for development, and this is frequently used toexplain or justify social exclusion. We wanted to demonstrate that this isnot correct. We also wanted people who have experienced the reality ofexclusion to be the main characters in the film because, too often, socialinterventions neglect the vision of their ‘beneficiaries’. At best resourcesare distributed without accounting for the viewpoint of the community towhich they are being directed.


Developing The Rhythm of Our Dreams in this way meant rejecting cer-tain existing media narratives. For example the clichés used by televisionreports (see also Christina Lammer, this volume) would reinforce a nega-tive image of the marginalized people we worked with. Following themedia tendency to tell a morbid tale of reality could so easily have becomesensationalist. Moreover the reductionism that is essential to journalisticrepresentations would have been offensive to the participants in our film.To avoid this we worked side by side with the protagonists and made onlylimited use of voice-over.

Simultaneously this project was not simply an evaluation of the work ofEncuentro en la Calle. It was not meant to be an analytical device framedby the terminology of institutional analysis. Rather we saw the documen-tary as a powerful analytical process in itself. The Rhythm of Our Dreams setin motion its own dynamic of self-reflection. We set about harnessing thisto support the development of the project rather than allowing it tobecome (consciously or unconsciously) simply a mock evaluation of theeducators and social workers’ activities. The protagonists of this storywere not born working with people in exclusion; each had their own per-sonal path of development and dedicated themselves to the project withvery clear ideologies and sense of commitment. There is an important dif-ference between living from the exclusion of others and living for the strug-gle of inclusion and we wanted to show how the protagonists of thisdocumentary achieved the latter. We agreed that it would be inappropriateto represent the educators in terms simply of their professional identities,but to show them as individuals. We intended the audience to identifywith and recognize themselves in these protagonists, to feel moved and beencouraged to change their perspectives and preconstructed stereotypes.We aimed to highlight the work processes of a group of people who wereconcerned about bettering the living conditions of the most needy.

Methodological Aspects

Our methodological tool was constructed to respond to the proposal devel-oped by Encuentro en la Calle. It involves a succession of processes of inter-vention, which create a set of products represented in different media.


Tasks (Process) Materials (Products)

Analysis of the demand Project(interviews and workshops)

Fieldwork (locations and contacts) Filming plan

Filming Brute materials

Viewing and drafting Edition script

Edition Documentary

Table 11.2

The first stage of our work consisted in carrying out a ‘needs analysis’. Weneeded to know what the client wanted to tell, the experiences that theyhave had through the years with people at risk or in a situation of exclu-sion. This was not exactly a commission as they contacted us to develop anintegral interdisciplinary project of intervention after becoming aware ofour previous audiovisual work (A Buen Común 1999, Mujeres Invisibles 2000,and see also Camas et al 2004, Pink 2004) and a task-training workshop forsocial intervention, which we carried out in Córdoba. To undertake aproper analysis of their needs and develop transparent work methods withthem, we decided to meet those responsible for the idea and organize twocoordination workshops from which we would develop the common objec-tives and strategies discussed at the beginning of this chapter.

The second stage in the organization of the task consisted of ‘definingobjectives’ and locating the most appropriate tools for them. We agreedfrom the outset that that most appropriate medium to illustrate the way oflife of people who live in the marginalized areas of Córdoba was the doc-umentary. We worked together to incorporate audiovisual media intoapplied anthropology methods: participant observation, in-depth inter-views, filmed diaries, and written words. For social work geared towardsinclusion, the association’s method of intervention involves their alterna-tive scheme of action: of ‘being without intruding’. Working on the street,rather than being office-based, they know that ‘reality can change on aday-to-day basis, from the most minute detail, from intrahistory. Wheneach individual counts, the street and the area are seen through differenteyes’ (Encuentro en la Calle 1998). In addition to the objectives notedabove, the social workers also wanted the film, by representing their workpractices, to present a model for intervention that could be transferred towork in other contexts of social exclusion.

The coordination workshops allowed us to merge our perspectives anddevelop a collective task. To create a polyphonic (rather than dialogic ormonologic) project, the scriptwriters and social workers met over twoweekends. Our work plan combined group dynamics and individual con-tributions, following the principle that while analysis is developed collec-tively, to attain synthesis, individuality in necessary. The timetable below(Table 11.3) represents our programme of activities for the first coordina-tion workshop in early 2002:


One process led to another and thus we arrived at the fourth stage of ‘thedevelopment of the script’. The materials generated in these encountersform part of the script. Some of the texts written in the workshops wereused as voice-overs, lyrics for certain songs used in the sound track orproposals put to the interviewees who appeared in the film. The coordi-nation of the project, the workshops and the script were carried out withthe help of Victoriano Camas. I played the role as a participant observer inthese workshops, adding a reflexive strand to our practice, I analysed thematerials from the coordination workshops and presented this to thegroup as a ‘field diary’. The discussion generated through the reading ofthese diaries also contributed to the development of the script.

From a formal point of view, the group of social workers from Encuen-tro en la Calle had accepted the script when we began writing it. Ourmethod of developing a documentary script includes both space forreflecting on the objectives and permits us to generate documents thathelp organize the successive stages of the project (Camas, Martínez,Muñoz and Ortiz 2004: 131-146). In contrast to fiction film, a socio-anthro-pological documentary, like a nature film, is unpredictable. Therefore forus the script refers more to the epistemological framework of the projectthan to a succession of takes and sequences. The script for The Rhythm ofOur Dreams outlined an production schedule. From this we produced the‘raw materials’ that formed the basis for our editing script.

The documentary script represents our analytical and interventionalobjectives. It is made up of a series of blocks:

1. The introduction outlines the causes of exclusion – why it exists,macro/micro, institutional and personal reasons. Here the educatorsand other characters appear suggesting a wide range of possible causes.


Friday, 4–5 p.m. Presentation ‘What is The Rhythm of Our Dreams?’

Friday, 5–6.30 p.m. Focus group ‘Who are we and what do we feel about theproject?’

Friday 6.30–8 p.m. Individual work ‘What and how would you make the documentary?’

Saturday, 10–11 a.m. Introduction and exhibition of individual work

Saturday, 11–12 a.m. Presentation of individual work

Saturday, 12–1.30 p.m. Work in small groups ‘As a citizen, people in areas ofexclusion and educators of Encentro en la Calle how and what do we want the project to be?’

Saturday, 1.30–2 p.m. Debate about possible operative device

Table 11.3

2. The second part addresses the audience directly through individualcharacters from marginalized areas: from those who have work andare ‘normalized’, those who are in the process, to those who haveextreme difficulties.

3. The third part proposes possible alternatives to exclusion.

The order of the content represented in these three parts emerged from ourobjectives to 1) explain the reality of people in a situation of social exclu-sion, 2) sensitize the population who is unaware of this reality and 3) pro-pose solutions to the spectator. For both an expert audience and those withno experience of the film’s themes there would be nothing more negativethan ending without providing any solutions to the problems representedin the film. As an alternative the documentary proposes creating efficientwork methods rather than a probably nonexistent panacea.

When we arrived at the ‘scene’ we discovered existing strands of workthrough which we could integrate different groups into the film project.The children and the young adults from the marginalized areas where wewere going to work already participated in a project called ‘The RhythmWorkshop’. This group met twice a week to sing, dance and create throughflamenco, a deep-rooted art form in these neighbourhoods with a highgypsy population. As part of The Rhythm of Our Dreams we decided toincorporate this area of the educators’ work with young people by creatinga workshop titled ‘Let’s Put Music to Our Dreams’. We sought to engagewith the theme of young people’s dreams by using their accounts to com-pose melodies for the film’s soundtrack. One of the members of A BuenComún, Rafael Mu_oz, a music teacher in primary education, developedthis. The entire workshop was recorded as a visual diary (using a miniDVD digital camera) and a diary written by the participant observer whoin this case was also the production assistant, Manuel Ortiz.

The methodology designed for ‘Let’s Put Music to Our Dreams’ workedin parallel with the weekly rhythm workshop. Through this a musicalresearch project was developed to examine dreams through a music ther-apy approach, normally used for group sessions, to locate a meeting pointwhere educators and children could learn and create together. Having thewhole process recorded digitally in both sound and vision by the partici-pating observer, along with the written field diary, provided us with anaudiovisual record of the teaching-learning process. When the project wasfinished the children who dreamt of becoming artists had a taste of whatthat might feel like. Their concert was recorded onto CD and three of thegirls from the project managed to launch themselves commercially, whenthey formed a group called Las Chuches and sold their CD nationwide.

Thus although producing the documentary was our main objective, theexisting infrastructure and effort of the participants enabled us to broadenour work to include other media and forms of expression. We also com-piled a book based on the written material generated throughout the pro-cess, not for general circulation, but as a working document for internal use


within Encuentro en la Calle. The documentary’s soundtrack was producedfrom the sessions carried out with young adults in the rhythm workshop.By combining these three products in the same digital medium we finallycreated a CD-ROM whereby people could read the book, see the docu-mentary and/or listen to the music. In the first stage of preproduction theCD of flamenco music was recorded, in the production stage we made thefilm and in postproduction we edited both film and the CD-ROM, using allthe materials that had been generated. The timetable, which was made inthe first of the coordination workshops, was as follows (Table 11.4):


Contributions to The Rhythm of Our Dreams.

The Rhythm of Our Dreams was a shared experience of applied visualanthropology carried out with and from the specific demand of the socialactors who were the film’s protagonists and those of us who representedtheir story. This approach, that combines social intervention, appliedmedia and social research was supported by our production of themethodological tool. Our collaboration was based on a model that inte-grated. On the one hand this entailed the coordination and flamenco work-shops and the flamenco, which generated the materials from which theproject was produced. On the audiovisual materials allowed us to repre-sent these work practices to other social workers and raise consciousnessamongst the general public.

Our starting metaphor and origin – the ‘dream world’ – emerged fromthe coordination workshops. But, why dreams? Why use what is dreamt toreflect what is lived? Dreaming is an essential element of the human con-dition both in the sense of night dreaming (see Edgar 2004) and as a formof projecting our fantasies and desires, which is our concern here. It is partof the imaginative and creative practice of being an individual (see forexample Rapport 1997) and forms part of our agency to instigate processesof change. Once we have defined our desire we dream of the future in the

Task Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Sep Oct Nov

Music CD Let’s Put Music to ConcertOur Dreams

Coordination workshops Project Diary Script Diary

Documentary Filming Filming Draft Edition Editionplan script

CD-ROM Compilation Designof written texts

Table 11.4

form of a path we intend to follow. However inequalities lie in that somefind the obstacles encountered in their chosen path easier to surmountthan others. The idea of dreams offers a simple and graphic way of illus-trating the distance that both separates and unites us. The contents ofdreams reveal the distances between us because while some of us dare toimagine a better future and struggle to achieve it, others dare not evenmention desires that are, for them, unattainable: living under a roof withtheir loved ones, having a dignified job, escaping from a neighbourhoodthat stigmatizes them and, the most sublime of all, freeing themselves.Viewing inequalities in terms of dreams illuminates two key points. Firstwe gain a sense of how individual creativity becomes a route throughwhich inequalities might be confronted. However, second, by looking atindividual’s dreams as comparative data we ourselves are confronted withthe contrast between the dreams of those who have access to basicresources and those who do not.

The general (dis)position of the social workers towards the project wasknown and shared by all. What remained was for us (the socialresearchers) to gain our own sense of ownership of our task. We began bydefining our own dreams in the coordination workshops. This allowed usto get closer to what we really wanted from the project. We took time toask ourselves, individually as people, and not as professionals, to imaginethe documentary we each dreamt of. Each of us, as individuals, describedour own vision of the film, bringing out the nuances that would inform itsmaking. The texts we contributed to the first coordination workshopreflected the group’s general feelings about the project and are closelyrelated to the script and the film. One of these texts was chosen as theonly-voice over in The Rhythm of Our Dreams:

To me the rhythm of dreams is about growing and fulfilling dreams. There isa marvellous freedom in dreams which has nothing to do with social classes,prestige, race or First and Fourth Worlds … To the rhythm sounds to me likeflamenco, like the girls and boys of the rhythm workshops singing and danc-ing their emotions. Women’s dreams, a faint song which escapes unwittinglyfrom a conversation one afternoon in a bar somewhere … I don’t know howmany types of dreams there are. I have ‘dreams dreams’: images that appearwhilst I am sleeping, I see them in colour, even though some say that wedream in black and white. Others are ‘living dreams’: longings, desires thatsurprise me when my mind wanders, fantasies … I have nightmares, dreamsabout a deep sadness, which appear when I am having a bad time, in diffi-cult situations or when I am tense, whether I am asleep or awake. It is bestnot to take notice of these dreams at the time…. They come with tiredness orwhen I can’t deal with myself or with anyone else. Bad dreams: personalinsecurity, fear of failure, letting down the people I love, allowing people tolook over their shoulders at me. I live life feeling excessively guilty andresponsible. I feel frightened about the permanently provisional nature ofmy job… I know that the provisional nature of my job is important in beingcoherent with our objectives, but I can’t avoid having complexes due to the


path I have chosen to take in such a class-conscious profession. The tempta-tion to seek protection and fall into line crosses my mind, but neither thefears nor the temptations are so powerful … A black fear comes over mewhen I think that in putting myself in the other person’s shoes I won’t wantto be in them. I dream of a world without contempt, where the person infront of you is what is important. I dream of a world where is no prejudice,where relationships aren’t built up around economic, power or sexualfavours … A world for and belonging to everyone … I dream with the hopethat allows us to dream but not to sleep, a world where no one has to grovel,be thankful or ask permission. I dream of a world where Encuentro en laCalle is not an association but a right, where the starting point is the same foreveryone. I dream of people who don’t look the other way and whose facesdon’t contort when they laugh…Having, accumulating, obtaining, workingto be and have more…. Rise, step on others, climb, what for? … This is adream with a misleading melody: to be in tune with it would empty us ofwhat is truly important: being me… This is my dream: To be me and live adignified life… for me and for everyone else…

I dream of not losing my dreams …To ensure that our work was truly choral and polyphonic the majority

of the proposals presented to the group had to be reflected somehow in thefinal product. Our primordial task as documentary makers was to imag-ine, or to ‘think in images’; to transfer the ideas that we wanted to conveyinto audiovisual sequences. To talk about exclusion we needed to knowhow to communicate it visually. This included identifying the images thatare commonly associated with exclusion, including those that we wouldnot want to use. What is exclusion and why does it exist? We had theopportunity to think about images without limiting ourselves. Imagina-tion has no limits but the technicians or the budget would soon clip ourwings. Which were my images of exclusion? A beggar with a stump at thedoor of a shopping centre, a shack, prison bars … Life becomes a lotterywhere destiny and necessity determine who is excluded, who are plainand simple citizens, and who will become educators. These three perspec-tives were represented in the group of scriptwriters and integrated in tothe film. The images and causes of exclusion are related to a cityworld ofconcentric circles of the type presented by the Chicago School in the earlytwentieth century (e.g. Park and Burgess 1925), but adapted to the Spanishcity.4 Here the centre is the power of the banks, political parties, commerce,multinationals – the major players. Moving outwards the middle classesinhabit an intermediate space in an environment characterized by greenzones. The territory of exclusion begins where this border ends, it is a ter-ritory where the poor struggle, in an environment where police cars patrolstreets that often lead to either prison or the cemetery. The privileged cen-tre has the right to live, those in the second circle must work hard to havea decent life, for those in exclusion all that is left is death!

The vision of the educators-social workers presents the dialecticbetween ‘making a living from exclusion’ and the more desirable ‘working


for inclusion’. Plenty of images could represent the former: a woman sit-ting behind an office desk attends another who is standing; it is rainingand the social worker has only one umbrella with which she covers her-self. The social worker and client never look each other in the eye; accessto the social workers is through doors, obstacles, paperwork and condi-tions, institutionalized blackmail. However, some social workers do notaccept the option of death for the excluded, they seek solutions. This wasthe approach to social work that we wanted our film to convey by repre-senting a shared sensory world. When the social worker and client sit at adinner table and share the warmth of a heater and a coffee their relation-ship shifts: ‘We rally together: For social problems we demand socialanswers!, No to exclusion!, because we live in the same space. We go to thepolice station and the law courts, the hospital and the schools, to look foremployment and to play football, we go to the talks in prison and sharemoments of discussion next to the fire, we do all these things together’.

The excluded themselves comment on the different faces of exclusion inways that, like dreams, evoke the visual, aural, tactile and olfactory expe-rience: a truck full of scrap, black hands, wrinkled eyes; the police seizingcrates of fruit, the helplessness they feel as the merchandise is confiscated;a car passing by full of ‘moon oranges’ (stolen in the light of the moon); theletters to the courts; coming off drugs and the experience of this transfor-mation; the mother chasing up her son, the lawyer, the courts; those wholive out of a rucksack, seeking for temporary work wherever they can …They speak of fresh running water, the channels that distribute it to thecity. As it travels to the excluded neighbourhoods it becomes dirtier andcloudier, it remains there, dirty and stagnant. Now there are no ornamen-tal fountains, no park, now there is nothing. People get up in the morning,unmotivated, they open their windows, look at their reality and retractback into themselves. If they do decide to go into the world they don’tunderstand the bureaucratic language, they don’t feel prepared to face thecontempt. Women selling rosemary near the mosque. The wastelands ofpoorer areas, the constant worsening of conditions day after day, alwaysthe same. The woman who faints as she leaves the social services wherethey have taken her children away from her. The way a drug addict walksin fits and starts when looking for his next shot. The child who is expelledfrom school for bad behaviour and jumps over the fence in the afternoonto play in the grounds of ‘his school’. The idea of the right to a dignifiedlife, a job, housing, does not exist, it all comes down to depending on indi-viduals, and not the establishment, to cover their needs. Understandablythey don’t feel part of the society that marginalized them. When justifyingexclusion the excluded begin and end with themselves, not the social sys-tem, not anyone else: This is how they see me! Because I am a gypsy and Ilive in this area … As they represent it, being ‘excluded’ is not simply a cat-egory one fits in to but a sensory embodied experience with its ownrhythm.


Our film aims to reach the general public. When we talk about thecauses of exclusion we emphasise that the excluded are not in that positionbecause they want to be, nobody would. We aim to help to break thisstereotype. By presenting images of excluded neighbourhoods that werenot too shocking we hoped that rather than making our audience feelguilty, we could show them how vulnerable we all are, by urging them toempathize with the film’s protagonists we suggest to them how it mightfeel to live that reality and how easy it would be to slip into that outer cir-cle of exclusion. We hope that through this we can begin to believe more inthe people who dream with another rhythm.


The R

hythm of O

ur Dream

s | 247

DIA HORA EQUIPO/LUGAR TEMA ENTREVISTA OBSERVACIONES

1-M 10–14 A: CÓRDOBA A: RECURSOS. Zona turística. P. /Q.añ B: RECURSOS. Centro ciudad.a B: CÓRDOBA M. / Y.n

DÍA HORA EQUIPO/LUGAR TEMA ENTREVISTA OBSERVACIONES

1-T 16–20 A: CASA R. Y M. A: ENTREVISTAS (de de 16 a A: Q., P., J.. R. /Ma 19 h) Educadores y recursos de r M. y R. C. en su casa y por el d barrio (de 19 a 20h)e B: Entrevistas (de 16 a 18h) y

B: Casa R.-M. RECURSOS. Barrios obreros y B: L., T.CÓRDOBA, alrededores (de 18 a 20h). J, M, / F,BARRIOS


2-M 8–14 A: PALMERAS A: Seguimiento F., L. y J. Colegio, L, / J, / F,/ M.M.a Guardería (de 8 a 12h).ñ Seguimiento A. (de Palmeras al a centro de la ciudad)(de 12 a 14h)na B: B: Seguimiento Q. y P., Y., J. M. y Q./ P. / M.J.

TORREMOLINOS T. en Surge. RECURSOS de Torremolinos.

Appendix

Table 11.5 The Rhythm of Our Dreams filming plan (in Spanish)

248|

AN

AM

AR

TÍN

EZ

PÉR

EZ


2-T 16–20 A: LOCAL A: GENTE DE LOS BARRIOS A: M., J., F., P.. Mª LUZ /R. M.a MORERAS (de 16 a 20h) (F. y M. de acompañantes)rd B: ACTIVIDADES: FÚTBOL, e MUJERES. Recursos Palmeras. L. /M.

B: PALMERAS Escenas de pelota y casa. J.(de 16 a 20h)


3-M 8–14 A: CÓRDOBA, A: Seguimiento M. y F. (de 8 a 10h), JOSE MANUEL /TOÑIa FIGUEROA Y J. y P. (de 12 a 14h). RECURSOS ñ CASA JUVENTUD. CÓRDOBA (de 10 a 12h.)ana B: ENTREVISTAS (de 8 a 14h) B: A., E., M., J. (M. L. y N. MªJESUS / PICHUQUI

B: PATIO CERRO acompañan)


Table 11.6 The Rhythm of Our Dreams filming plan (in Spanish)

DÍA EQUIPO RECURSOS

1-M A Córdoba, Judería, Mezquita, Corredera, Potro, Puente Romano,Hoteles, Alcázares, Palacio Congresos, Agua-fuentes, gentepidiendo limosna, vendiendo flores, romero, semáforos... La ideaes grabar imágenes de la zona turística, de la limpieza, de lasfuentes bellas, del patio de los Naranjos y sus acequias quedistribuyen el agua para TODOS los árboles. Hay que sacarimágenes de turistas de espaldas.

1-M B Córdoba, Bulevar, Corte Inglés, Paseo Renfe, Cruz Conde,Tendillas, Concepción, Cajasur, rótulos, carteles, agua-fuentes,Colón, Patos, P. Victoria, República Argentina. La idea es grabar elcentro económico, comercial y financiero, sus fuentes bellas yornamentales. Todo está limpio y hay luz en el centro. Grabar lasgrandes avenidas que salen desde el centro hacia los barrios declase media y obreros (es un viaje del centro a la periferia)

1-T A Después de las entrevistas, la idea es salir al barrio de Palmeraspara grabar recursos de R. C. y Miguel, pero además, grabarrecursos del barrio a la anochecida, para terminar el viaje centro-periferia (Centro por la mañana; barrios obreros por la tarde,barrios marginales al oscurecer)

1-T B Antes de salir, se puede grabar a R. en la escena de la pelota.Después, salir a Córdoba: Fuensanta, Ciudad Jardín, Parque CruzConde, Sector Sur (abajo), Avda. Barcelona, P. Alpargate,Alrededores de Palmeras, Torremolinos y Moreras. La idea esseguir con el viaje del centro a la periferia. Estos barrios son elsegundo cinturón después del centro. La luz es menos brillante, esde atardecida, los barrios están bien equipados, sus fuentes sonfuncionales, para beber, y no tanto ornamentales.

2-M A Seguimiento F. y L., J. Encuentros con gente, Local. Palmeras:puertas, casas, rejas, descampados, carreteras, calles, patios,colegio, guardería, casa hermano M., vistas, candelas, campofútbol, fuentes secas, agua estancada, alcantarillas, personajes conniños.El seguimiento a A. desde Palmeras hasta el centro, se sube al bus8, se baja en el centro y llega a las oficinas del INEM, del Ayto, enun peregrinaje para pedir trabajo.

2-M B Seguimiento Q., Paseando, encontrando gente. En la oficina segraba sobre todo a T. y a J. M. trabajando en el ordenador,recibiendo a gente y ayudando, informando, etc. Después salimosa la C/ Torremolinos: gente, pared picadero, local, vistas desdeterrazas, candelas, fuentes secas, agua estancada. Campillo defútbol. Muros, paredes, descampados, puertas, ventanas...

3-M A Seguimiento M. y F., J. y P.. Residencia Figueroa, Casa Juventud,Recursos de Córdoba, calles de los barrios en el camino de uno aotro sitio, gente trabajando, yendo y viniendo.

3-T A Seguimiento José M. Cárcel antigua y macrocárcel. Hay que grabarrecursos con J. M. y otros recursos de la cárcel sin personajes.Grabar puertas, celdas, candados, barrotes...


DÍA EQUIPO RECURSOS

3-T B Moreras: patios, descampados, límite Pryca, local, local Mariana,pirámides, alrededores local de Encuentro y DD.HH., fuentessecas, agua estancada, grabar personajes por el barrio: E., M., F.Seguimiento a M., paseando por los patios de Moreras,encontrándose con mujeres y niños. Grabar recursos de M,llegando a DDHH, por los alrededores.

4-T A Agua: EMACSA, centro ciudad, atardecer, candelas, gente barrios.Habría que grabar recursos de Juanono, Rafa C., Miguel por lascandelas y a la atardecida

4-T B Polígono y cerro, atardecer, candelas, gente barrios. Grabar a Q., P.,por las candelas

5-M B Recursos pendientes. Grabar en el mercadillo del Arenal lospuestos de algunas familias de los barrios

6-M Recursos pendientes

7-M Recursos pendientes

Bibliography

Camas, V., A. Martínez Pérez, R. Muñoz, and M. Ortiz. 2004. ‘Revealing the Hidden’ in S. Pink, L. Kurti, and A.I. Afonso (eds), Working Images: Visual Research and Representationin Ethnography. London: Routledge.

Edgar, I. 2004. Guide to Imagework. London: Routledge. Encuentro en la Calle. 1988. Modelo de Intervención en Entornos Socio-familiares de Exclusión.

Seville: Government of Andalucia.Park, Robert E. and Ernest W. Burgess. 1925. The City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Pink S. 2004. ‘Conversing Anthropologically’ in S. Pink, L. Kürti, and A.I. Afonso (eds), Work-

ing Images: Visual Research and Representation in Ethnography. London: Routledge. ——— 2005. The Future of Visual Anthropology: Engaging the Senses. London: RoutledgeRapport, N. 1997. Transcendent Individual. London: Routledge.

Filmography

A Buen Común.1999. A Buen Común.Mujeres Invisibles. 2000. A Buen Común.The Skin of the Mountain. 2002. A Buen Común.The Rhythm Of Our Dreams. 2002. A Buen Común.

Documentary Film credits for The Rhythm of Our Dreams

Script and Coordination: Ana Martínez Pérez and Victoriano Camas BaenaProduction: Manuel Cerezo Lasne and Ricardo Rivera PenaCamera operators: Lorenzo María Hormigos and Jesús M. TiradoSound technician: Ángel López AlonsoSound assistants: Raúl Montoto De la FuenteSalvador López AjeroProduction assistants: Rafael Muñoz Sotelo, Manuel Ortiz Mateos and Ángela García MirandaEditing: Manuel Cerezo LasneOriginal Idea: Rafa Corpas Reina and Miguel Santiago Losada

Notes

1. Translated by Emma Davey and Sarah Pink.2. The Mesquita is one of the most important historical and tourist heritage sites in Spain. The

Patio de los Naranjos is literally a patio courtyard outside the Mesquita with orange trees.3. This is an ideology which came about in Bujalance, Córdoba whereby the olive pickers

worked as a group; women, men old and young, each person did their part of the jobwithin the bounds of the group and when the work was finished the money wasdivided equally between the workers without regard for sex or age. We have taken thisideology and used it as our own in our documentary work.Here Fourth World refers to marginalized people within the First World.

4. The layout of Spanish cities tends to differ from the models produced by urban sociol-ogists for British and North American cities. Whereas in Park and Burgess’ (1925) modelthe inner zone represents the poorer area inhabited by immigrants and the urban poor,while the upper and middle classes progressively move out to the suburban periphery,in Spanish cities the city centre tends to be inhabited by the wealthy while the outersuburbs represent the poorest areas of social exclusion.


THE RHYTHM OF OUR DREAMS A Proposal for an Applied Visual Anthropology

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