In Medellin a group of young people is making use of new technologies and multimedia formats to display their creativity using Web 2.0. They want to showcase a man how lives in the street. He has managed to survive in such a hard environment with a high dose of wit, he has a history of fantasy, one of those in which "reality surpasses fiction"- This group is building a documentary to tell his story and have decided that the creative process will be conducted online and open to contributions from anyone.

Francisco Cardenas nickname "Cinealoido" told me: "This 24 min audiovisual video project, tells what we know about Juan David Posada Arango, a.k.a "rifas" (raffles, in english), a man wich working on the streets became his only chance in life. "Rifas" is well known in different sectors of Medellín such as El Poblado, la Villa de Aburrá y Carlos E. Restrepo for raffling off beer, liquor, food and cigarrites just for 2.000 pesos each ticket… Thanks to this creative proposal, Juan David gets to the people that participate, giving messages that they listen carefully. He's become an icon of Medellin's pseudo-culture, and at certain sectors of the city, he's become in a concrete "example" of creativity as a result of the top of mind he's reached compared to others living and working in the streets. Even though sometimes he doesn't look like a life example, he's also shown in this way"

Raffles´ life, like that of many others, is fantastic and deserves to be told, it is attractive and different, but as I see it, it is also a good excuse that allow this young Colombians to start on a project with the characteristic of our times, a Web 2.0 project. The project is in the initial preproduction and research fase. Here begins what strikes me, the process of creating a documentary, that is normally closed, private and even secret, becomes a public process for them. They are inviting others not only to take a look to what they intend to do, they invite you to participate and comment on it through the blog where they are showing the progress of the project.

Additionally, they have uploaded on the Internet the videos of each of the interviews, the audio files of each session and the photos documenting the work with Raffles. The files have not been edited they are uploaded on the network seeking anyone from anywhere to access and even reuse them because everything is being licensed with Creative Commons.

The project not only involves the three who had the idea (Federico Ruiz "astronautaperdido", Luis Perez "pe5pe" and Francisco Cardenas "cinealoido") but involves other groups such as La Capsula, Coffee Makers, Ciudad Pasarela, Kafeina and Los Arboles, they are seeking support from local musicians and have many friends that support for them other specific tasks "each and everyone who participates, no matter how, will get their credit", says Cinealoido. They expect to have a product by March 2008.

All the theory that supports the idea of a second economy, the existence of communities of interest that create for the pleasure of doing so, that are not working specifically with the logic of enclosure that intellectual property law claims as an incentive for creativity and that support their work ethics on collective practices in which it is the individual recognition that really counts, all these can be seen clearly in this example.

The project is clear and the goal is a product… what happens after that is not yet defined, they, at least in this process, create just by the love of what they do not by the money it can bring.

What is being done to tell Raffles´ life is most probably a process that has always been done by amateurs, but the economic model that is based on the control and ownership of intellectual production lead our logic and makes us wonder every time we discover proposals like this how is it possible? It even challenges our idea of what is an "author", because tell me who is the author in this project?

Finally, it also strikes me how this community and sharing practices when confronted to adopt a legal frame tend to seek somehow control... the group is using a restrictive CC license, they are not ready to allow others modifications and fear commercial use... a general trend that reflect fears that I hope will soon show wrong.

More about Raffles

He is a man from the streets, he lives in a hotel located at Medellin's downtown. He sings on buses, makes raffles at some city parks, he likes rock, salsa, reggae and he likes to read. He lived 8 years in Choco (Colombian jungle region), and helped to built Costa Azul Hotel at Nuquí. He's been separated from his family almost for 14 years, he has a son who lives in the USA. He played soccer at the Choco Team. In Cartagena, he was put in jail during 8 days. He became a drug addict and ended up living in the streets. Now he suffers lug cancer, but he still amazes and surprises with the little things of life. Reality or fiction in all of this? That's what we are finding out.

tags: Medellin Colombia culture film-making open-content cc-license open-culture

extracted from: