Casa Grande is set in a small village in the backlands of Northeastern Brasil.
It is a place where children of all ages are taught about music and media.
In the course of reflecting traditional culture through the eyes of young people, we co-created a film and produced it together. The most I learned from this project was that the process of visualizing a thought brings out a lot of additional information. At the time, I was exploring the notion of Saudade (longing) through the eyes of traditional poets. As I read about what they were missing, I became curious about what the younger generation thought of this. I thus asked Casa Grande Foundation if they were interested in doing a project together.
The process gave me a lot of insights: Much less about Saudade than about how much entrepreneurial power these kids had. For instance to organize a donkey and then convince it to collaborate with the camera. Or to find an elevator within a radius of 100km pretending that this was the city of São Paulo. The collaboration with Casa Grande Foundation in 2005 initiated me to what can be learned about each other by co-producing a film.
