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What a nice suprise to arrive on Rio de
Janeiro on the day a big article about the project is published in the most
important paper OGLOBO. Nearly a full page with two pictures! Pretty amazing! I
travelled to Rio with two other collegues of the Solar World Cinema Foundation,
as we just finished two other projects in Uruguay and Chili where we’ve set up
two new solar cinema’s. The three of us meet up with Ivan, the director of EME
>> mobile art studio. He takes us to an opening of an exhibition and
whilst drinking on the street we chat with a lot of people and we quite a few
have read the article in OGLOBO and will come to our shows.
21 November:
The workshop starts! We arrive at CEFET and
invite students to come to the palestra where we introduce the project. In the
last couple of months Ivan and I have been in contact with the students via a
facebook group so some of the students we can now meet in real life! The
auditorium fills up with interested stories and I introduce the project and talk
about the international adventures of the solar cinema.
Eventhough i talk in english I have the idea
most of the students even understand my story without Ivan’s translation in
Portugese.
The group is really interested and have many
good questions! Pretty full of energy we end the palestra and go and have a
look at the van that will be converted into a solar cinema van!
Some how when seeing the van i get a little
bit nostalgic: it’s an old T1 Volkswagen van! When i first started the solar
cinema project 6 years ago, the solar cinema logo had a T1 VW van on it.....
Soon we start unpacking all the solar-system
elements and make a list of things that are missing. We end the day with the
first technical plans for the installation.
22 November:
Today the construction of the solar system in
the van will start! A big group of students is gathering to get involved.
Numerous plans and ways to make the construction are discussed, and discussed
and discussed again. Slowly but surely plans ar coming together and the
students can be divided in to groups tp start working.
It’s great to see not only the students being
involved but also several teachers love the project and are working with the
student on it. The CEFET even has one ‘solar-energy’ specialist as a teacher,
so this project really fits this school! We meet Mr. Richter in the afternoon when he has just arrived back
from a big ‘solar-comference in Peru’. We talk about the project and he decides
to dedicate his eveningclasses to solar-energy and photovoltaic.
As we are still missing some essential
technical parts for the installment we can only start really building things
towards the end of the afternoon. In the meantime we visit the CEFET- TV studio
and talk with the students, trying to start developping and idea about the
programme-content. We also meet Moana from VideUrbe, a videoplatform that
projects video in the city, making the city it’s projection screen, projecting
on buildings, trees and pavements. With VideUrbe we will work together on one
of the screening nights.
As we have not been able to really start
building the solar construction I have a bit of a restless sleep, will all be
ready on time?! Soon I find out: the brasilian way of working might differ from
the dutch way but all things get done perfectly!
23 November:
On arrival at 10 am a small group of students
is already working hard on the construction of the solar panels, the batteries
are wired, a soundsystem is ready to be tested, a trailer for the projections
has been finished and all other work is under control! Pretty amazing to see
everyone now knows what to do, all work well together and i can just sit back
and take some time to blog!
