WHO AM I? Welcome to my house, where you can find out a thing or two about myself, as well as my work. So, who am I? To avoid boring you stiff, I'll be brief: I'm an artist, in the broader sense of the word. In the last 10 years I have been expressing myself through movies, and before that I explored mostly painting and drawing. Besides my personal artistic projects, I work as a motion graphics designer and video editor. But if you would like to know more details regarding my profile, click HERE to read my resume and bio.
MOVIES So, I make movies. "But what kind of movies?", you ask yourself. While my first answer risks being "all kinds", I need to be realistic. In the end, we end up making art about what is closest to us. In my case, I think this holds true... My movies, usually short, tend to come from personal experiences, dreams, goofing around with friends, my dogs even... For example, I am currently post-producing an interactive video about my dog Betóva (check out the LABORATORY session down below). But anyway, if you would like to see some of my movies, click HERE.
FINE ARTS From my childhood until my early twenties, I expressed myself through painting, drawing and some sculpture. I went through various phases, exploring the impressionistic landscape, the abstract, the figurative from observation, the still (or not so still) life, the surreal/dreamlike, the graphic novel, etc... With this I began maturing the two different ways I tend to create, found in my movies: the observation of the external world and the exploration of the internal, imaginative psyche. In the last years I have been fusing my experience with fine arts and film, with cross-polinations of characters and modes of observation. If you would like to see a sample of my drawings and paintings, click HERE to go to Flicker.com.
FILM SOCIETY I run a sort of film club, the Sopão de Filmes (Movie Soup). Being among the first of a new generation of film clubs in my city, it was started in 2003 as an informal opportunity to exchange experiences with other filmmakers in Brazil. The project attempts to create a non-profit space for the projection and informal discussion of moving pictures from Florianópolis, Brazil and abroad. Thus, opening the comunity to dialogue, exchange of ideas and techniques; in other words, creative and cultural exchange. Also, since it is free and open to the public, it contributes to the formation of an alternative film audience (not to mention that it gets some soup into people's bellies!) Check out the program HERE.
PINTÔ SUJÊRA I also am part of a collective called Pintô Sujêra. In 1996 my friends created some goofy songs, inspired on situations and local off-beat characters from Florianópolis. That was pretty fun, so in 1998 we made Na Estrada da Vida (On the Road of Life), an amateur video based on the songs. Many movies later, thanks to some awards and word-of-mouth, Pintô Sujêra is known today for its zanny style: improvised and crafted at the same time; a tongue-in-cheek mix of documentary with fiction. Check out the site HERE or click HERE to see some of the videos.
LABORATORY Since making movies and art in general takes time, I am always "distilling" (to borrow a term used in the production of Cachaça, a kind of booze which is often found in my house); I'm always developing one or more projects simultaneously. I often work with large ammounts of raw footage (common in the documentary format), so sometimes it takes years for a project to be finalized. At the moment I am post-producing two large projects:
THE YEAR OF THE BITCH An experimental interactive documentary in which my dog Betóva's first year of life was recorded, day-by-day, in 365 episodes ranging from 5 seconds to 5 minutes in length. These episodes will be accessed through an interface I call hipervideo - a timeline in which each episode has a selectable window of one second. Sometimes creative treatments of reality, sometimes sober documentation of the mundane; the episodes build up to a vast portrait of the life in my house between 2003 and 2004, in which Betóva is the link. Planned to be ready on DVD in March of 2008, Betóva's 5th aniversary. Find out more by clicking HERE to go to the project's site.
SISTEMA DE ANIMAÇÃO (ANIMATION SYSTEM) Participative documentary co-directed with my friend Guilherme Ledoux, with whom I have made many short films (the awarded THE END OF THE WORLD - Flashback Society and PROVIDÊNCIA: How to Make a Cachaça Comercial, as well as the local cult films with the collective Pintô Sujêra: On the Road of Life and Hey! You! Everybody!). Invited by percussionist Ledoux, in 2003 I embarked on a portrait of the talented and not less excentric Toicinho (Lourival José Galiani), a local drummer who has played beside Brazilian greats such as Originais do Samba, Eduardo Araujo, Camargo Mariano and Fafá de Belém. Recently he has been found playing with Cassio Moura Trio and other projects. Most of the taping (which exceeds 42 hours of raw footage on miniDV) was collected in 2003 and 2004; the rest is being recorded as the editing calls for. In a relatively more sober style than our other films, the documentary imerses the viewer inside the experience of meeting Toicinho first hand, in a fusion of participant and historic cinema, always through our subjective lenses. The result, which is maturing into a feature-length documentary (and later medium and short docs) weaves a portrait of the Toicinho(s) we encountered during the taping: a true born artist as well as marginal, a condition not easy (or possible?) to explain, although certainly as much a result of the cultural situation in Brazil as much as Toicinho's personality. Find out more HERE at the project's site.
| COMMUNITY | |
| collective Pintô Sujêra | www.pintosujera.com.br |
| film club Sopão de Filmes | www.sopaodefilmes.blogspot.com |
| designer/artist friend | www.ivanjeronimo.com.br |
| filmmaker/animator friend | www.flippingpixels.com |
| designer/artist friend | www.flickr.com/photos/schadeck/ |
| cute & useful things | www.fofysfactory.com.br |
| funny music video spoofs | paginadorafinha.terra.com.br |
| friend's production co. | www.vinilfilmes.net |
| translator/interpreter sister | www.elenalangdon.com |
| anthropologist/counselor mother | www.gesto.ufsc.br/members/jean |
| cultural center in Florianópolis | www.pomardasartes.blogspot.com |
| mosaic/tile artist friend | www.selvart.com.br |
| cousin's band in Portland, OR | www.myspace.com/sketchyted |
| cousin's production co. in CO | www.akvideo.org |
| al_langdon@yahoo.com | |
| TEL | +55 48 3733 6529 |
| CEL | +55 48 9941 2714 |
| SNAIL MAIL |
caixa postal 5104 Florianópolis, SC 88040-970 BRAZIL |