In.Vulnerability

Conceived by Gaia Saitta, director associated with the Halles de Schaerbeek, by Charlie Cattrall, filmmaker, and Giuliana Rienzi, set designer, this film took as its challenge the first confinement, between March and May 2020.

It is not a documentary on confinement or the virus, but a participatory creation, aiming to find a way to be humane in times of forced isolation.

Since it was impossible to bring together directly the inhabitants and artists of Brussels, a call for participation was launched via the social networks of the Halles de Schaerbeek and their relays. The response exceeded our expectations, just as social networks transcend borders.

The first participants returned the call and, as Brussels is a multicultural city, videos arrived from all over the world, for a total of more than 30 hours of material. A series of simple actions were requested from each participant. A series of actions to deal with the extreme situation of individual loneliness and collective powerlessness.

From several hundred very different videos emanates a common narrative, showing the instinct of contact, living intact in our bodies, the unspoken need to define ourselves through and through the other, beyond the distances that were (and still are) imposed on us. Making this film is like offering our humanity a common skin, vast and diverse, magnificently contradictory, which, despite the impediment of contact, never ceases to touch, caress, rub, hurt, sweat, breathe.

With the support of Cocof, a first half-hour version of this film is offered to you by Gaia Saitta's company, If Human, which is also working on a long version and a video-installation device, to share all these testimonies, addressed with a grace, generosity and sincerity that has moved us.