I Wish

Well done to Sami Cass Darweish in Year 10, who was chosen  to represent not only GDIS, but  also Birmingham and England at the  International INDIE Young Leaders' Conference in Amsterdam in October 2009.

Over 150 video-makers between the ages of 15 and 25 took part in the professionally led Stranger Academy workshops and presented their work to an audience of experts and other video fans. Among those was  GD's own Young Leader Sami, who worked together to explore the fine points of video making and produced a  one-minute video on the theme of inclusion & diversity

This is an account written by Sami of his time at the conference.

"The whole trip was amazing! It started at 8 o'clock in the morning at the airport where I met the three other English representatives. We got on the plane and the trip only took 45 minutes. It is always fun to go on a plane.

I arrived at the hotel that we stayed in, and we immediately got split up into groups with other people from around Europe (they all spoke perfect English!). Then, in our groups we went into creating a storyline and storyboard for a film we were going to film the next day. Our film had to be one minute long and it was difficult to fit a story in a minute but we did it!

The next day in Amsterdam we got up for a 7 o'clock breakfast (yes it was 7 o'clock) then we went into the areas near the hotel in Amsterdam and started filming. The filming was so much fun as we filmed it, scripted it and acted in it. 

On our last day we went into a private cinema and we viewed only ten of best films out of two hundred, in front of two hundred other people. My film was good enough to be shown. The link to the film that I created is here  it is called "I WISH".

To sum up, The trip was really fun as we got to learn about other cultures around Europe and made good friends with other people on the course. It was a great experience!!