Cross-border Journalism

The new project #blueborder of the online magazine cafebabel.com goes on a maritime discovery journey: Ten selected young photographers and journalists working in cross-border teams create five multimedia reports on the Mediterranean islands of Malta, Cyprus, Sicily, Crete and Corsica. Togteher they tell stories about local identities, social challenges as well as old and new lines of conflict.

Following the online publication of the reports in four languages, an exhibition is shown in schools, cultural centers and youth clubs in Marseille, Chemnitz and Brussels over spring/summer and autumn 2020 on. In cooperation with local partners and the cross-border teams, the traveling exhibition is accompanied by discussions and thematic workshops with pupils, residents, members of the association etc. 

#blueborder is supported by the Allianz Kulturstiftung, Babel International and the French-German Youth Office.

The last few years of the Soviet Union brought with them not only a “wind of change” – but also an unexpected baby boom. As the Soviet Union steadily imploded, these so-called “Perestroika babies” were growing up on the far side of the Iron Curtain. While becoming teenagers in a society experiencing chaotic transition, they quickly had to learn what freedom really meant to an era of accelerated capitalism and they had to face up to the fact that the countries they’d been born in no longer existed.

Twenty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Beyond '91 – Portrait of the Perestroika generation illustrates the tremendous changes the post-Soviet world is experiencing. Taking the form of a series of seven multimedia, cross-border stories, lifting the veil on how the post-Perestroika generation view themselves, Beyond '91 combines the work of 14 young journalists, photographers and filmmakers from seven countries: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine.

Beyond '91 is designed to show the changing social, political and cultural identity of the post-Soviet bloc as viewed from the present day: A quarter of a century after the collapse of the Soviet Union, what do young people from that generation resemble today? Do the children of the former USSR still have anything in common? In the context of growing tensions between the east and west of Europe, could a post-Perestroika youth be a bridge between two worlds?

Time frame: 2017
Project partners: Café Babel, Advocate Europe, N-Ost network

Bye-bye Tito, hello chaos? 25 years ago, the Croatian first war for independence marked the dismantlement of long-time glorious united Yugoslavia of Tito. What do the Balkans look like today? What do its younger generations want and dream of? In order to deconstruct the stereotypes linked to this region and depict its current political, social and cultural situation, cafébabel launched its project Balkans & Beyond.

14 talented and promising journalists, photographers and video makers from the region worked together in transnational teams, investigating from a young and multicultural perspective. The multimedia and print stories from Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Slovenia deal with different topics, offering a multitude of perspectives and angles: What is it like to be transgender in Kosovo? Why is Slovenia “No country for young men”? And who are the young women leading the so-called Macedonian “Women’s Revolution”? A photo exhibition featuring works from Balkans & Beyond was organized at the Centre Marc Bloch and at the Office of the German-French Youth Association (DFJW) in Berlin during the months of April/May and October/November 2016.

Time frame: 2016
Project partners: Café Babel, German-French Youth Association (DFJW)