Project website here.

Citadocs is a collective that uses audiovisual narratives — made about, for and by citizens — to document communities historically rooted in the city of Porto. Methodologically, this project uses the format of short labs with the aim to: identify and explore new ways of collaborative documenting, encouraging the use of accessible mobile devices; challenge citizens to exercise the way they look at their own city, through audio and video recordings; document the transformations and invisibilities of the city of Porto; produce short documentaries as a result of the whole work.

In the first lab, the project focused on the Ilha da Bela Vista, a neighborhood undergoing a process of architecture rehabilitation. The goal was to rescue oral memory. In 2015, the focus moved to an agglomeration of Ilhas, in the street of São Vítor. This time, it was necessary to provide a set of technical and procedural recommendations, in a pre-script, that facilitated the participants’ work. These first two labs involved audiovisual editing, with the aim of producing short narratives that could tell one of many possible stories of those inhabitants. In the third lab, the approach was more experimental. A drift through the city was proposed to the participants, exploring the camera as an extension of one’s own body, in order to think the territory and the documentary film itself.

Citadocs is a continuation of the previous futureplaces project doc4citizens. Having the rescue of oral memory and the production of collaborative films as main motivations, it intends to continue to explore new approaches of creation in the documentary.

Coordinated by
Ana Clara Roberti
Daniel Brandão
Vanessa Rodrigues