Ayse Muge (Maggie) BAKIR
Screen & Stage
"Every child has a story to tell, a dream to accomplish"
Come on let’s follow the little footprints and bring hope to every corner of the world!
Following my work with children, I developed Little Footprints to provide a creative and happy filmmaking opportunity for kids so that they can write, direct, shoot their own stories and strengthen their bond with cinema.
Why "Little Footprints"?
We choose to follow their footprints that will lead us to their unique view of the world; their world !
It is a common sense that the adults are mostly right as decision makers because they are more educated and more experienced than young generations so youngsters follow their big footprints. This is very useful and advantageous for young souls in order to learn from experience and be able to avoid mistakes and may progress faster. That`s true ! As a common sense, youngsters follow the footprints of older ones, in other words adults.
But sometimes an agony in the distance is heard or mumbles on the lips need to go louder or a constant gaze tries to grab some attention.. their footprints in the world might be smaller than the adults but they need to get heard, their little footprints may lead us to an unknown issue that we need to know about or a new perspective.
They must be listened when they want to say even a word: a word to change their lives, many lives, their society, even may be the world. Our attention to youngsters is vital and provides the support for the courage to speak up, we need you to see them, hear them so that they can lead us to their own path and show you their chest of dreams where they keep all their future, fears, views and hopes. That`s why we wanted to provide them a media platform where they can speak up, we choose to follow them when they lead us to their own world!
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Steps towards Little Footprints
I wrote and directed two short films that tells children stories at Bournemouth University as a part of MA TV & Video Production. Then I worked on popular teen TV Show" High-School Diaries" ( Lise Defteri) as A.D". The successful TV series followed the adventures of a group of high school students through their friendship and hardship.
A few years later my work with UNICEF , ECF and One Minute Jr Organization and TRT1 started. I worked as a director and scriptwriter for children's show "One Minute One World" which was a EU collaborative with BBC (Blast) as one of the broadcast partners . After the success of the show, the TV channel also ran a re-run. We travelled Turkey making film with youngsters who introduced their stories and also their local culture. Providing filmmaking training and filming kit to kids, they all produced one-minute films.
Following my work Children with Leukemia Foundation (LOSEV) as their Film - TV teacher for two years and devising scriptwriting workshop with children prone to dialysis.
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Every child has a story to tell, a dream to accomplish. Cinema is for all so I wanted to provide an opportunity of filmmaking for all children who love filmmaking, including children who may come from underprivileged or disadvantaged background. I noticed that filmmaking is mostly available to children whose parents that can afford it. Therefore, I aim to create a platform where institutions, authorities can provide their kind support for children to make it possible to make films. With the kind support of our partnering organizations, Little Footprints come to life, having National Geographic Kids as the media sponsor.
Little Footprints (KAI) started as a creative filmmaking project for children that was produced in Istanbul, Turkey in 2010. Our aim has always been to support and empower youngsters through the use of media. Youngsters write, shoot, edit short films that express their ideas and thoughts about their rights, lives, social issues in Turkey and their hope, vision for a better life, for a better world.
We taught them how to work on an idea and how to turn that idea into a written story, we helped them to visualize it as the film director and through their artistic view they make their own short films.
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