It’s true. I became part of an extraordinary story, as the Stranger Festival posters said. I have met lots of people from all over the world –from Moldova to the UK, from Romania to Sweden and I have had the chance to share stories, interests, opinions, pasions… with them.

The last day of the Festival was great. Workshops continued during the hole day with fabolous results. I had the chance to be the cameraman of our group’s movie –directed by Viktor, a Bulgarian guy, and with actors from Curaçao to Latvia. The film was a kind of love story between two astronauts who were two strangers in the real world. We set up the scene, use costums, and play the movie by ourselves, leaded by Vava Stojadinovic and Janneke Küpfer, who run the workshop. You really feel like you were in a real movie. Later, we added music and saw the rest of the movies in the evening.

Other workshops were “Performance Workshop”, by MC (Made in tha shade / Cosmic theatre) in which people shot footage and created a live performance using interactive sound and movement techcnology; “Being the Videostar”, by Articial Eyes, wich was about creating a visual performance on screen or “Reporting Stranger”, by AT5, in wich people learnt how television is made. Unfortunatelly I couldn’t went to all the workshops, but strangers told me they were all fantastic.

And then, at 20.00, the big event: the Stranger Awards Show 2008, presented by Evelien Bosch and MistaJam, in which we could know who the winners are:

• Amsterdam Award: “Bien venue”, by Abid Mankachi (Netherlands)

• MTV StrangerAward: “
Alimentation d'un congolais moyen
” by Sylvain Koko Kinshasa (Congo)

• Official StrangerAward: “
The walk” 
by Maciek Salamon (Poland)

• Audience Award: “
Scriptwriter
”, by Lukasz Laskowski (Poland)

• Best of the world: 
”a priori”, 
by Rob von Jacobs (Belgium)

• Inside Out
: “Untitled
”, by Zarina Pashtova (Russia)

Then, we had a break for the MC performance, and we continued with more awards:

• Selfportrait: “
who I am (not)”, 
by Peter Vodicka (Slovakia)

And a Special Stranger Award went to Nanda, from the Netherlands, with her video: “Ik ben Nanda”

After the awards, the Hit Me TV rock band started the afterparty with a short concert, followed by GirlsLoveDjs presnts SEEN Visual Music met DVDJs and VJ Aneiko with Lars Vegas and Mr. Wix. A cool end for the Stranger Festival 2008.

See you next year!!!

PS: Want to see all the pics of the Stranger Festival 2008? Just click here