How the documentary is related to the final film product

Abstract

Research on a topic with multiple individuals and events can be endless. I knew that the foundations of what happened in 1968 receded in time: Anthropophagy, Gilberto Freire's concepts, the period in which Edgar Santos was the chancellor of Federal University of Bahia, Rogério Duarte’s ideas, Solar da Fossa, etc. I also knew that the ideas that had been planted then still influence Brazilian artists of today. It was necessary to establish some boundaries, establish a clear parameter on what should stay and what should be left out. My first boundary was temporal; I chose to portray solely the events of 1967, 1968, and 1969 and the researchers Eloá Chouzal and Antônio Venâncio began gathering only material about that period. This decision often gave rise to comic situations in which the researchers would come across pearls of information from 1972 and I had to remind them that they lay outside the scope of this work. I became a slave to these set boundaries, but they also helped to institute a clear territory in which to operate. Without them I certainly would have gotten lost.