What does our motto (“Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder”) mean? The English saying means that there are many different ideas of beauty… We focused on a kind of beauty that not everyone might see, because it’s seen through our hearts and not only by our eyes. Our purpose is to show the unconventional face of beauty using the power of media.
The first step to do before starting work was to get to know each other, Finnish and Italian guys, in the order to discuss easily about strong topics. Fortunately since the very beginning of the project we have had the opportunity to meet on a virtual platform created by Merja, the Finnish leader of the group; in September we began to post tour comments and questions, we asked each other little things about each other and our countries. Little by little from September to April we had been creating the minimum knowledge to shape a friendship. Our project consisted in creating five short presentations (made with movies, photos, recording..) on the topic of beauty. We were divided into red, blue, yellow, green and purple teams. Each team had to focus on beauty seen in one peculiar context; we had to enhance it in the order to show that not only the beauty that we can easily appreciate, and that everyone says to be so, is the real one, but that another kind of beauty does exist, which includes all the things that you enjoy. The five topics we worked on were: “everyday beauty (subjective) versus stereotyped beauty”, “beauty in history”, “beauty in art”, “ethnic beauty” and “the beauty of nature”.
On April 14, when we met at the airport, I immediately recognised my partner Mira; when we approached I felt her embarrassment, because Finnish people don’t want you to go “into their skin” (too close) or maybe because she felt her English was “not so good”. So I avoided asking her too many questions, tbut little by little we could talk about something more, and finally we started sharing our lives.
The two sides of us all were involved in the exchange: both our knowledge and skills, and our human and friendly qualities. It was wonderful to see that our friendship was a resource to help the group work and to make everything funnier. Usually in my school I study the subjects on my own, because the purpose is to increase my knowledge and I have just to use my mind to reason on something: and this is quite difficult with other people around you. On the contrary the workshop they proposed to us was more practical, and I found that experience new and very interesting. And in the end we had a result, something in our hands and not only on our minds. In my every day life I could never think of movies, radio, TV as my future. My idea of my future is based on something theoretical while, on the contrary, I saw the media world mattering so much to my Finnish friends. I’m still asking myself if this is because of our different cultures or because of our different ways of life. The funniest moments were when we took the camera and let our creativity free to imagine how pictures might better represent what we wanted to express and show. Sometimes the weather was against our plans: the sun shone when we had to shoot grey and sad images, and it rained when we needed sunny and happy scenes. I found it very motivating trying to interview people: I really wasn’t able to approach people and convince them to answer one simple question, and I marvelled looking at how my group mate andthe leader of our team, Aku, introduced himself, talked to people with the right words, while everyone ran away from us, scared of the camera. Whill dealing with the technical part, I learnt how to hold a camera not shaking it, what the best framing in different situations was and other little but very important things.
From the point of view of feelings I got really a lot from some participants to the exchange, both Finnish and Italian. I tightened some old but not so deep friendships, I got to know new people from my school, and last but not least I did felt like home with my Finnish friends. To give an example: on the last day a lot of us went to the park and we spent a pleasant afternoon playing music, talking, sunbathing, taking pictures (obviously!), and comparing the length of our feet: mine were almost as long as the ones of every male!
I still think that I’m very lucky to have Mira as partner, because she is at the same time a funny companion and a sweet and tender friend. She attends a drama course in her school, so she always showed her feelings with a lot of emphasis. She told me a lot about her family and I was fascinated by her lifestyle: she lives alone, in a college, three thousand kilometres for far from her family, she is engaged to her boyfriend (she showed me her engagement ring!), and she has recently (this week) moved to her boyfriend’s house. She’s very independent, like I’ve never been, and I admire her for this reason. I loved the family moments I spent with her, for example the evening when we cooked together for my family “risijä ja sahramia makkaran kanssa” (rice with saffron and sausages); or the afternoon when we went to Campalto’s post office to send her postcards. I know I won’t be her host in Finland, but I hope we’ll share as much time as possible.