Tuesday 2 February 2010
2010 - A New Decade
Saturday 13 June 2009
Wednesday 20 May 2009
Thursday 7 May 2009
Launching of Visionwell Coaching Club
Visionwell Coaching Club is dedicated to the cause of making people happy through leading a meaningful life. Its aims are to explore, define and inspire the meaning of happiness and fulfilment through a creative approach to film, the wonders of mindfulness and the power of choice. Its coaching role is to lead and support each individual in finding a sense of purpose, defining and pursuing the path towards the work one loves, and creating value out of any situation and relationship along the way.
Visionwell is a metaphor to make us reflect.
We are a well of vision. We also live in a visual age hence the use of creative approach to film in coaching – which also helps to identify the emotional blockages that we unwittingly project onto the outside world.
Visionwell Coaching: Protect Your Dreams!
"Making the world happy one person at a time"
Behind this pledge is the belief that true happiness and lasting peace in society at large lies in our individual sense of fulfilment, and the conviction that everyone has the capacity and the right to pursue a fulfilled life through the realisation of our own unique talents. Because "everyone has been made for some particular work and the desire for that work has been put in his heart", in the words of the Persian poet and philosopher Rumi.
"Nothing limits achievement like small thinking; nothing expands possibilities like unleashed thinking." – William Ward
Rossana Chiarelli
click here for the Italian version
Wednesday 29 April 2009
Tuesday 28 April 2009
Shooting From The Belly... X Isles. My Story..
The initial idea was to explore some of the themes about narrative I was interested in at the time, such as identity and its construction, sense of belonging, global history. The images of the two countries are interspersed together with stereotypes constructed by the mass media. Beginning with old images projected by an old 8mm film, the young woman is going through her childhood memories. A phone rings and the answering voice replies (as if carrying on an ongoing conversation) “no, I’ve said it already. I’m not coming back” in a foreign language. The young woman is talking to her mother who is at the other end of the line and is asking, an all too often repeated question: “When are you going to come home again?”
X Isles is a highly personal work, produced during a period of intense questioning and inner search. I was at the end of my first degree and this was to be the final project. It was not produced with an audience in mind and I myself wasn’t clear about the outcome: I never claimed to want to make it for other people. I was searching for something and wasn’t interested in thinking about audiences! The process of creative filmmaking in itself was the thing that really mattered. Besides, it was a time for experimentation in the craft of storytelling on video, as well as a period of profound identity crisis. I had my head full of fascinating theory which I absorbed and debated in a foreign language for three intense years, an experience that totally change me and left me with an excruciating yearning to find my roots again –through language, through images, through stereotypes, through sound, music, memories, food. But it felt like trying to grab hold of water: I could no longer find what I was looking for in my Italian heritage and in the process I ended up wondering what were there to be found anyway.
This is what X Isles is about, the internal struggle one ends up fighting when one loses perspective of the process of growth and tries to resist change. It can be very messy and one is left feeling raw and vulnerable and, indeed, exposed. Looking back at all this obviously gives me perspective on that period and I can say that, despite the mess, it was all very enjoyable and even therapeutic. Now I’m left with a tangible memory of what was going on in my mind at that time. As I mentioned already, X Isles is a highly personal narrative, at times obscure and even amusing perhaps. It’s an inconclusive narrative that goes in circles and cycles and that’s how I see life. Those who have watched it have been able to enjoy it perhaps because of its innocence and rawness.
I will always look upon X Isles with fondness as it contains memories, my personal memories and images from childhood with people who are no longer with us. I urge anybody to do the same, to use the medium of video as a tool for expression, and I’m keen to help others piecing together their stories through a visual narrative. That’s my aim now, to build awareness of the benefits of writing one’s story on video and offer a new vehicle for video production and consumption as a tool in coaching, through Visionwell ©
Rossana Chiarelli
X Isles - Part 2
click here for the Italian version
Shooting From The Belly....MANA
Mana - Lives In Brief
On video biographies.
Mine is not a traditional type of writing although it is gradually becoming more established. I write journals, but not on paper. I keep a diary, though not only with a pen. I use words, but express myself with images. I am bilingual and live in that strange place between two languages and cultures. I use video to describe the way I see the world, to record my memoirs and tell the stories of other women. The digital medium is my paper and the lens is my pen. My writing has grammar, rhythm, punctuation, rhyming and stanzas. It contains more than just words and speaks my languages at the same time.
Indeed, behind every production there is a lengthy preparation and a script that forms the spine of the narrative. In fact, some established conventions can provide a useful structure to those who wish to explore this medium in more depths. Some of my favourite video productions were mere study of such conventions. They were experiences that allowed me to exploit and observe the dynamics of mediation in making video biographies about the other subjects. One such example was Mana, a short about a Japanese contemporary dancer, which was commissioned as part of a series called Lives In Brief.
As the name suggests it was to be a very short documentary in the style of video diary, which described the essence of someone’s life.
I stumbled across my subject almost by chance, after doing pre-production work on another person who had to pull out at the last minute! There I was, in
Talking to her was so enlightening. It was impressive to learn how she dealt with her life, including the overcoming of her disability and her way of being so candid about it on camera. The important thing for me, as far as the piece was concerned, was not to make her disability the central focus of the narrative: Mana was not a last minute substitution, she really was an incredible subject because she a was a strong individual who chose to leave a constrictive culture and emigrated to a place where she felt free to express herself and her individual talent. I felt an affinity with her for choosing to challenge her role as a woman, imposed by her own culture and move to a new country where she could start defining herself in hero own terms.
What happened afterward in her life, namely the tragedy of losing her sight, contributed to add strength to an already remarkable person. Her disability had not only made her stronger but it had become a catalyst in her commitment to her art. For space reasons I cold not include all that was said during the whole interview, but I can say that I was truly humbled when she explained to me that her blindness became an eye opener in her life, especially with regards to her calling: it was then that dancing became a vocations. For research purposes the piece could not exceed the three minutes and this forced a strong editorial control from my part, but I believe that with integrity one can refrain from sensationalising a subject for the sake of manipulating the audience emotional response, whilst at the same time putting across the message on an inspiring story that will stir the viewer in a positive way.
Rossana Chiarelli
click here for the Italian version