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| 1) Clément Elbaz, drawn in 2015 by Mr Scheiner. |
I shot movies. I also cut movies, ans I also write articles. I do it outside any professional frame setting, without orders or agenda and with the sole aim of sharing ideas, researches, travels and meetings.
I was born in 1987 in Montauban, an origin which might have encouraged my desire to be elsewhere and made me cross, since then, nearly 60 countries. My first travels took place in Central Europe and the Balkans, with friends. Then came the time of the solo Grand Tours, a little further.
It was so as not to let my experiences, reflections and encounters get lost in my individuality that I decided from my very first lone roadtrip to be accompanied by a camera and to shoot movies... a laborious work in the first years, as it is true that video editing is a demanding discipline. But I filmed places and people, learned by doing and always shared the results on YouTube, for free.
A first film was shot in 2008 between Istanbul, Krakow, Lisbon and Dublin. Then, in 2010, I left my one room appartment in Toulouse, my construction worker status and I really leaved, to make a series of weekly 10-minutes documentaries that followed my discoveries of Serbia, Moldova or Ukraine... amongst others!
Without house or home, felling well in my flip-flops, I spent two years between hitchhiking, trains and buses. But a bit tired about moving, I decided to put an end to this period and to come back in Toulouse to settle and quietly edit the 12 films I just shot. This break, which was transformed after the making of two films into a sterile lethargy that I must admit, nevertheless gave me time to refine the ideas which still guide the realization of my projects/
A documentary was shot in Israël in 2015, a first historical documentary has already been released in May 2018, and if the 12 films shot 9 years ago have still not yet been released, they have nevertheless not been forgotten, and should be combined into a big one which will finally be released in 2024. 13 years after its shooting.
Since having a nice pile of pending projects does not prevent you from making the situation worse by starting new ones, another documentary film was shot in Central Asia in July 2019, and a professional project was shot in Cairo, Israël and Paris. It will hopefully be released in 2024-25. And of course, in the meantime, new documentary portraits have been filmed: one has been released and three others are in preparation.
Facing the relative boom of this welsite, I decided to disperse a little more by starting to write various articles. The results of all these projects, completed or in progress, can be viewed on this website. The goal is to share ideas, trips and meetings... to make them available to everyone, free of charge and free to share. The desire is to transmit as best as possible all that I have been able to learn, while giving those who are tickled by the desire to travel, in the real or the ideal, to take a tour to see what can be seen and know what can be known. The content of this website is born from the movement, it must pass it on!
FAQs
Why this blog?
Because I find it interesting to share ideas and experiences. I tried for the first time to make a report at 8 years old, to tell my class about a family trip to Quebec. Ten years later I started road trips with friends in Central Europe and the Balkans and, back in France, while telling people about my travels, I heard a lot of prejudices about the countries I had just visited. This is what gave me the idea of creating a participatory website where travellers could post interviews with locals they had met on the road, just to break down preconceived ideas and invite people to travel. The idea didn't work but it was still with this project in mind that I set off for my first solo ride; paradoxically, to better share my travels, I had to be alone. And finally instead of a website collecting short clips, a 45-minute report was produced, and that's what launched the following ones.
How did you train?
No training! I bought my first camera a week before my first solo trip. I filmed everything in automatic mode with technical knowledge that can be summarized to my ability to locate the play button, recharge the batteries and change the tapes. I learned the job by doing, little by little. It's quite instinctive actually.
How is it financed?
With various part-time jobs, or my microbusiness as a videographer! It's not at all as expensive as one might think. At the beginning the equipment was amateur, even first price, and when traveling I stayed in hostels, I used CouchSurfing or I benefited from the hospitality of the people I met.
To give figures, the 2008 trip cost €1,500 over 50 days, and was filmed with a €400 Sony Handycam DV camera. In 2011, as I lost my credit card halfway, in Kaunas, I begged money to be able to continue the project (only in Scandinavia, in countries richer than France, by principle). A sort of traditional crowdfunding which meant that in the end, this great six-month tour only cost me €600, plus the €400 that I had spent on a new digital HD camera.
And you never made money from your films?
I did ! In 2020 my YouTube channel was monetized, and the ads earned me €166.89, at the rate of 30 cents per day. My films therefore financed a loaf of organic bread per week. But in 2023 YouTube decided to take away my monetization because I no longer posted enough videos. That suits me, the main thing is to share my ideas and my travels and anyway now I'm making kesras.
What are your political opinions?
The best answer is found in my films and my articles, but to summarize, I could say that my social sensibility is left-wing, and that I am ideologically a universalist, secular and progressive dude.
