Video Residency Solar Cinema & CEFET students

Dona Martha Show

The show in Dona Martha was amazing but intens! Apart from making the show we also had a crew of Globo News filming us setting up and interviewing all partners and some spectators. Really great to see the attention of the press, we actually made the 6 o'clock news!

Our audience consisted mostly of kids that were going wild! screaming shouting and waiting for the films to start...but they enjoyed our films and after one hour of shorts, our partner VideUrbe took the stage and projected on the walls of the favela.

End of workshop week one, start of week two!

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On the saturday it's already time for the finetuning and testing of the solar system. The students have worked incredibly hard to finish all the installation so quickly, I can hardly believe we now have another solar cinema on the road. The last wires are connected and than the van drives to the sunlight and immediately the panels start charging the batteries! It works!

Quickly we attach the soundsystem and videoprojector and we test everything. It's all working like a dream so we can now sit back and relax for a bit and renew our focuss on the next stop: the filmprogramme! Monday morning we gather a small group of students and we discuss the filmprogramme, I show them our Go Greener Shorts and they show me some of their selected films. We talk about the power that art has to bring across a message and decide which films bring across our messages. The students bring in a film from 1989, but watching it it is still so relevant today. It will fit perfectly in our programme.

We look forward to our first show on tuesday at the Saes Pena Metro station but we fear for the rain that keeps on falling down in bucketloads. As we arrive at the school on tuesday afternoon it remains unclear IF the show can go ahead. My motto is always: 'we will see'......and so we decide, 'we will see' and a additional tent is hired to offer a dry place the the possible audience. I do have to take into account that the dutch and brasil mentality differs when it comes down to 'rain'....as the dutchies will never let the rain stop them, the people in Rio seem not to move at all when it rains, as they are used to the waterlevel in the city rising to dangerous hights..

While we wait I edit a quick 'making of trailer' and the students finish of their intro trailer and interview. We make a test setup in school and than decide the show must go on! With 9 of us cramped in the combi (i cannot believe this little strong hulk can carry us all + the weight of the solar system), we set off for Seas Pena....On the square about 5 police cars welcome us and we can easily set up and start the show, slowly more and more people stop and watch our films! With a smile on our faces we tear down the cinema again when the last short film ends and smile again as we see the batteries have not used too much power.

1 show down, 2 to go!   

The workshop has started!

-->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!