12/14/2007 - Video-letters of German AFSers on National TV's website

We are happy to announce the official kick-off of an exciting project that AFS Germany is currently involved in. Two former German AFSers, Eva Wolf (Ecuador 1986/87) and Kathrin Lemme (Brazil 1985/86), now film directors and producers, are working with the ZDF, one of Germany’s big public national TV stations, on a documentary called “One Year Abroad”.

Eva and Kathrin have trained a group of German AFSers before they went abroad. These AFSers are now documenting their AFS experience in the form of video-letters, the first of which have now been released online on the TV station’s website. New video-letters will be added constantly; every student is supposed to provide at least one video-letter per month.

You can find the first video-letters here or click on the image below.

We are overwhelmed by the results so far – not only do the students prove to be talented filmmakers, but also great story tellers.

The German AFS students participating in the video-letter project are:
Stina (Norway), Ben (USA / North Carolina), Stephanie (USA / Seattle), Johanna (China), Cedric (USA / Wisconsin), Hannah-Lena (Brazil), Nele (Panama), Christoph (USA / Illinois), Marijke (USA / Minnesota), Marina (Canada), Manuel (Malaysia)

At the same time, Eva and Kathrin are filming current host students in Germany and their German host families during their experience. They plan to produce a 90 minute documentation movie which will be shown by the ZDF some time in 2009.

With Eva and Kathrin being former AFSers themselves, they have proven to handle this project in a very sensible way, and we are extremely happy about this cooperation and look forward to working with them on this exciting project in the future.