"Handmade Cinema" looks for recovering the audiovisual memory of Lavapiés area through a collective creation experience that gathers audiovisual present and past records from neighbours and that will programmed workshops to make live films in 16 mm with the material received.

Off Limits develops this Project with the Uruguayan artists Ángela López and Guillermo Zabaleta and thanks to the support of the grants to Cultural Projects of Social Impact from La Caixa.

Off Limits invites neighbours from all ages in the Madrid Lavapiés area to recover those audiovisual materials shot in Super 8 and 16 mm they will probably have in their houses and garrets and which are the audiovisual memory of the area. This initiative is the starting point of the project Handmade cinema, a collective creation experience that tries to recover audiovisual records, photographs and documents from a landmark in Madrid such as Lavapiés, and already in October will programmed workshops open to the public to make several individual films and a collective filmperformance with the material received, consisting of the creation of a live film in 16 mm that will be shown publicly. Off Limits develops this project in collaboration with the film directors from Montevideo Ángela López and Guillermo Zabaleta, thanks to the support of the grants to Cultural Projects of Social Impact from La Caixa.

The home or amateur films that used to be filmed last century, very few can watch them because of the progressive disappearance of the film projectors, but still keep a fundamental part of our personal and collective memories. They are images that remind us how we used to live some decades ago, and that, in this case, can show the peculiar transformation of the Lavapiés area and its neighbours in the last half century of its history. That is why Handmade cinema focuses in recovering the affective memory of people from different generations and different social strata who live or have lived in the area. Off Limits, along with the film directors Ángela López and Guillermo Zabaleta, from the Contemporary Art Foundation in Montevideo (Uruguay), invite all citizens who wish to do so, to recover their films from or about Lavapies to participate in this project bringing their home recordings or documents as a testimony.

And in our aim to recover our memories we want to go further, inviting to recover not only recordings but also testimony files such as photographs, flyers, letters and all kind of documental material. The purpose is to generate a trip to the recent past of our neighbourhood through tapes that accumulate personal experiences, memories, trips and lifestyles that until recently characterized us. It is about rescuing our collective memory through emotional memories from different neighbour’s generations. In these small films kept in shelves and garrets it is possible to find important information about those issues that the official history, usually interested in great events, tends to leave aside: popular festivals, social gatherings or just simple moments of familiar intimacy.

The material (recordings, films, photographs, flyers, documents, testimonies…) can be delivered in Off Limits (C/ Escuadra, 11, bajo. Madrid), from 20th July until 28th September from 8 a.m. to 15 p.m.

The films received will be cleaned, diagnosed and catalogued. There will be a selection for its digitization, its use in the workshops and later its public screening in late October. All films received in Off Limits will be returned to its owners from November.