A group of young people in Eastern Ghouta have managed to produce a TV program with twenty episodes, exploring the lives of citizens under siege.
After the Assad regime prohibited all essential food items, fuel and gas cannisters, the people of Ghouta began to depend on themselves and their land, coming up with previously unthinkable methods to manage their livelihood in novel and creative ways.
The program, 'Ideas from the Heart of the Siege' proves that with a small camera, and rebellious youth in the prime of life are all you need for artistic creation.
The work consists of twenty episodes filmed in a special 'studio' – a destroyed school that no one visits any longer, after it was hit by an aircraft two years ago, leaving twenty child martyrs and dozens wounded. These young people revived it and invested it to reflect the lives of citizens in Eastern Ghouta.
On choosing the location, the director, Bilal, said that "we will rebuild all that was destroyed by Assad. If he killed our bodies, he will not be able to kill the spirit of hope inside us."
"The presenter of the program enters every street and every house to tell a biography of Eastern Ghouta and the struggle of its people and their legendary patience towards the killing machine and to the whole world; the whole world has abandoned them and allowed the siege on them and allowed their humiliation. They relied on themselves and created new methods that outwitted death, " he said.
"Abu Fares, for example, depends on solar energy for cooking, Umm Samer turned the salon of her house into a small farm so that they can feed their children without some plants that need relief organizations, and Abu Mohammad was not paralyzed by having his foot amputated, to avoid the humiliation of begging from relief organizations that are already bankrupt."
The program is not free of errors, but they are mostly technical errors caused by the bad situation, the scarcity of equipment and the lack of specialists.
Translated and edited by The Syrian Observer
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