Workshops in Paris 20th district

In 2008, the City’s Policy Delegation and the Ateliers Varan set up, with the help of the organisation Passeurs d’Image (ARCADI), a documentary filmmaking workshop in the 20th District of Paris in areas heavily affected by a number of major urban development sites. Over the following three years, until 2011, the inhabitants were helped to write, direct and distribute a series of films about their neighbourhood.

The section of the 20th District running from the Porte de Montreuil to the Porte des Lilas is felt to be a kind of ‘in-between zone’, made up mainly of social housing and sports facilities, and under pressure from a number of important infrastructure features. In these neighbourhoods, where a process of social and urban transformation is taking place, the idea of this documentary filmmaking workshop came out of the desire to maintain a record of this mutation, and of the changing viewpoints of those who are living and experiencing the reality of this area.

A total of 22 films were made in this workshop.