Organize a Screening
If your association, school or group has an interest in hosting a screening, let's talk. We can help you organize it.
Contribute
If you live in Bahia or are traveling there in the future, take a look at several options you have for helping with groups like those featured in our film.
Get the Press Kit - text only
Members of the press, grab complete information about the film and our project with this text release. 375 KB.
Get the Press Kit - full version
Get our entire press kit here. It includes the press release, photos, logos, and the trailer in QuickTime. 59MB.
Video Podcasts
This is a media project. Instead of writing lengthy newsletters, we'd rather just show you what we're doing with moving images and sound.
The Project
project background
Around the world, the celebrated Afro-Brazilian region of Bahia is synonymous with cultural proliferation. This is the largest concentration of afro-descendants outside of Africa. Capoeira, Terreiros de candomblé, quilombos, afoxês, blocos afros - these are the cultural conventions through which Brazil's blacks have affirmed their African heritage and waged war on poverty, racism, and oppression over the last 4 centuries.
As communities called "quilombos" did during the time of slavery, today's Bahian cultural leaders are dismissing the racist, unbalanced power structures of modern Brazilian society by organizing their own microcosms - social institutions based on equality and African heritage that function as refuge for local youth. In contrast to larger Brazilian society, these groups empower and encourage their youth to become anything or anyone they want.
our mission
To Create A Voice: Our team of Bahian and US media professionals have spent four years producing a documentary feature that tells the world the inspiring tale of how a powerful grassroots Afro-Brazilian arts movement is overcoming social and economic depression. With this film we seek to educate and inspire others about the beauty of this movement by relaying portraits of creative social entrepreneurs and their young apprentices. Find out more about the four groups we selected for the film below.
Sustaining the Voice: So that the organizations featured in the film can continue to create their own media products for advocacy, promotion, and education, we've now armed all of them with their own digital video filmmaking equipment and computers capable of editing video. Volunteers have enhanced the project by helping to train these groups in the use of the tools they've been given. This part of the projecthas been executed in collaboration with the Instituto de Mídia Étnica - a Bahian group of media activists that are puting video, print, web, and radio communications technologies into the hands of Bahians without access to them.
After assessing the needs and effectiveness of various grassroots organizations in Bahia, we've decided to work with the following four groups. We wanted to represent a cross-section of the performing arts community in Bahia, so we picked one group in each of these four arts: drumming, circus, theater, and capoeira.
Drumming Group: DiDá
DiDá is a project devoted to the personal development of adolescent women through drum performance. The project encompasses both a professional group of female musicians (Banda Feminina DiDá) and a school for teenagers named DiDá Escola de Música e Dança. DiDá means "the power of creation" in Yoruba - referring to its female participants' power to give birth to children. In their short history, the women of DiDá have shown the world that they also possess the power to give birth to exceptional music, dance and inspiration.
Circus Group: Circo Picolino
As the pioneer of a movement that is now nation-wide, Circo Picolino began as a simple tuition-based children's circus over 15 years ago. Today, it's a multi-tiered circus organization which boasts over 400 students in weekly attendance. These students are primarily at-risk children who come to Picolino through public and private institutions focused on getting kids off the streets. At Picolino, children gain self-esteem and learn valuable lessons about co-operation and social interaction through a circus style that focuses on acrobatics as a performing art.
Theater Group: Bejé Eró
Bando de Teatro Olodum is a 15 year old theater group notorious in Salvador for their heavily political and Afro-centric performances. Bejé Eró was founded by Anativo Oliveira and Rejane Maia, members of Bando who wanted to bring the positive values and perspectives they gained through theater to their own low-income city project. Through Art-Education, they strive to teach children theater as a way to express their Afro-Brazilian culture proudly and loudly. By engaging them in theater, they catch their attention and get them more involved in other aspects of education as well.
Capoeira Group: ACANNE
Capoeira Angola is a dance and martial art concerned with the religious, physical, and social development of the individual. ACANNE works with children in Bahia - focussing on local community building. They organize courses, lectures, debates and expositions around Afro-Brazilian cultural expression. They work through the play of Capoeira Angola as a means to educate the community about their rich and diverse culture and the necesity to protect it and practice it.