The Iron Curtain Diaries

November, the 9th, 1999. The fall of the Berlin Wall set the seal on the end of the Iron Curtain, a fence some 7 thousand kiilometres that split Europe in two spheres of influence. A division that lasted from the end of World War II to the end of the Cold War. How did the lives of those who grew up along this ideological and political border change? How did the dreams of the boys who jumped on the Wall to celebrate a regained freedom end up?

After twenty years from the historical date, four editorial staff – Peace Reporter journalist agency, Matteo Scanni, movie director, Becco Giallo comic Editor and Prospekt Photojournalist agency – have decided to travel along the former Iron Curtain border and to tell what it was. Two teams provided by  videocamera, photo-camera, audio recorder and drawing paper have left from Berlin toward two directions: the first heads to the north has travelled along Germany, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Russia; while the second heads to the south has touched Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

They come back to the headquarter with dozen of interviews to writers, politicians, musicians, sport people, photographers, dissidents and ordinary people. whose lives have changed after the Berlin Wall fallen down. These stories create a big fresco, a celebration of the ideals, but also speak about the collapse of the dreams of a new western lifestyle.

The project resultant is a surfing website, highly interactive within 35 mini-movies with a variable duration from 2 to 10 minutes. Following the points of the path along a map of the old Europe, the user can discover the laps of the trip, read informations texts, listen to the original audio files from that time, share the lives of the persons who born under the curtain shadow. The narrative style is new, and merges video, photos, comics, animation, graphic and music.