Living Legends

The transformation of oral tradition, fairy tales, legends and myth into animation-films: That was the idea of twelve filmmakers and culture-pedagogues from Columbia, Ecuador, Estonia and Germany who travelled together for five month to rural areas in each of the four countries.

Three animation-film workshops were held in each country for young participants, in which the youngsters researched local stories in order to transform them into short animated films.

The aim of Living Legends was to collect and preserve oral history and wisdom, which is traditionally passed on by the older generation to the young, but in many places there is very little – if any – left of word of mouth storytelling.

Living Legends created an exchange between generations and used modern communication tools to give new life to the stories.

The Animation Film Workshops

Stories Shrouded in Legend

With professional guidance the youngsters produced animation films of the stories they found and heard. They learned each step of the animation film process to create the films: beginning with drawing a storyboard, building the sets and characters, up to animation and sound recording.

Beautiful stories were rediscovered, for example the 12 Giants who became mountains in the Andes (Ecuador) or the saga of how howler monkeys got their loud voices (Colombia), to mention just two of over 40 stories.

The films were screened publicly in each community directly after the workshops and they were also shared on the project website where an archive is generated for the preservation of all the stories.

To Be Continued:

Screenings, More Workshops, DIY Manuals

Since the first tour the Living Legends Team continues to host more workshops and screenings in the partner countries. The Moviemiento team can be engaged for the workshop, just write us!

A whole manual of the workshop is free to download at the project website. Those interested can use this manual to host workshops themselves on the basis of those hosted by Living Legends.

(Photos: Nadja Bülow)