1. What proved the most challenging part of our July Phase 2 DOTCOM experience for you?
I find it is often very easy to reflect on an experience and blame others for problems that arose. In DOTCOM I could blame visas and air lines, censorship and governments, mentalities and setbacks. Yet if I reflect on my place in DOTCOM, I see how my expectations (before the program even started) came from ignorance, misunderstandings, and pure oblivion to the realities of lives, cultures, and history. It continues to be a challenge for me to deal with, on one hand, the construction of the program in my mind and, on the other, its reality, and from that I have gained invaluable lessons. It was challenging for me to witness differences and tension and have absolutely NO CLUE how to deal and react to them. It was disheartening to learn, after the conclusion of our Vermont stay, that most of our films had been pulled from YouTube. It was even harder when we edited out a primary voice in our film in order to keep it online... On a different note, I am not one to readily ask to be educated in something that I am utterly ignorant to because I think, to a certain degree, it is one's own responsibility to read up on the subject before asking questions. Unfortunately, I did not do any reading until August and, only then, was I able to pose questions and have conversations of the reality of governments, public unrest, youth arrests, and Nagorno-Karabakh. It was challenging to deal with my frustration and ignorance of why films had been censored, pictures could not be taken, and conversations could not be held. However, it is precisely these challenges that clearly emphasizes the importance of the program.
2. What proved the most rewarding part of our July Phase 2 DOTCOM experience for you?
The most rewarding part was sitting in a chair in the Big Picture theater viewing our ten films and as each film was showed, looking over to the group that made it, seeing their beaming smiles and pride for the culmination of weeks of hard work, sweat, tears, laughter, ice cream, and bonding between the members of each group. I am so grateful to have met everyone involved in the program.
3. What proved the most fun part of our July Phase 2 DOTCOM experience for you?
The most fun part, for me, was laughing with anyone and everyone in the program on topics ranging from public bathrooms, to wikipedia pages, to playing instruments, to attempting to pronounce Azerbaijani and Armenian words. If nothing else can, laughter is something that will always bring people together...
4. What are you most excited about, looking forward to our online Phase 3 DOTCOM experience coming up this fall?
I hope to develop the relationships we have between each other even further, perhaps tackle some issues that are playing out in each of our lives, and come to reason with and discuss challenges we all came across. I hope to make more films :) and lay out ideas for making films when we travel to the South Caucasus in March!
& It's most-definitely difficult for me to pick my absolute favorite photo from all of July. But this is definitely one of the top ones. All of us were laughing and it took over 10 minutes to set up the pyramid only to have it momentarily hold itself before we all quickly came crashing down on top of each other... Also Samir's face is priceless and Niko seems to really be enjoying not having to be part of the actual pyramid...
