WHO WE REALLY ARE
76’ documentary by Paulo Alberton (www.pauloalberton.com/?p=696)
Australia, Brazil – 2014
(52' version welcomed)
LOGLINE
African Brazilian Master Roxinho confronts his traditional views of Africa when he meets a group of young African refugees at a multicultural high school in Sydney. A conflicting master-disciple relationship filmed over six years.
SYNOPSIS
African Brazilian Master Roxinho comes to Australia in 2006 and starts teaching the art form of Capoeira Angola to a group of troubled young African refugees who go to Cabramatta High School. The school is uncertain of what to make of this program. Some fiercely resist it, arguing it is not helping students improve their behavior and literacy. Others defend it, arguing the program will help African refugees with no prior education to better integrate into Australia. The filmmaker becomes deeply involved with participants as he follows, in a participatory filmmaking style, the unfolding stories of migration and African diaspora that emerge from in between the walls of a multicultural school in the outskirts of Sydney, Australia.
CONTEXT: MULTICULTURALISM AND AFRICAN DIASPORA
Capoeira Angola is an art form rooted in the African culture and spirituality that emerged in Brazil during colonisation. It helped slaves strengthen physically and spiritually to deal with the shackles of oppression. Today, centuries later, Capoeira Angola crosses the oceans by the hands of Mestre Roxinho and meets a group of young African refugees who experience learning and behaviour difficulties in a public school in Australia. Although they come from diverse cultures, Roxinho and these young African refugees close a kind of circle back to their African roots, in Australia.
Curiously, the filmmaker is descendent from the race and culture of those who oppressed the African slaves in Brazil. Film production could reproduce a tension of historical dimensions. But complicity unfolds, as in the Australian context, both the filmmaker and the Capoeira Master are ethnic migrants in an English colony.
The film, both in its production process and its screen content, is situated at the intersection of a complex set of narratives of diaspora and multiculturalism that compete in terms of the perspectives and values in which they are constructed and developed. As a story of diaspora, all participants exhibit particular traces of both their routes (their journeys) and their roots (their origins) and they negotiate these through filmmaking and through the diasporic art forms of Capoeira Angola and Rap. Despite coming from very different cultural backgrounds, participants belong to the same multicultural category in Australia.
THE FILMMAKER
Paulo Alberton is a Brazilian-born (Australian Citizen) independent documentary filmmaker who used to work as an international airline pilot. Over the last 17 years his films have explored issues of racial, cultural, religious and sexual identification. Paulo has lived and worked in São Paulo, New York, Johannesburg, Perth and Sydney. He studied at NYU, in New York, did Queer Film Studies at WITS University in Johannesburg, did an MA degree at AFTRS specializing in documentary directing, and a Doctorate of Creative Arts at UWS, in Sydney. Paulo has taught film at university, certificate and community levels. His broadcast credits include the 10-minutes Going To The Dogs (SBS); the half-hours Give Me A Break (SBS) and Living On (SBS) and one hours’ Swapping Lives (SBS), Drums of Maranhão (TV Cultura – Brazil), and a long running half-hour documentary series on Brazilian instrumental music (Sesc TV – Brazil). Awards include Best Photography for Water and I; Film Australia special commendation and ATOM Best-multimedia award for Mijn Man; and Best Documentary and Best Editing at Western Australian Screen Awards 2004 for Going To The Dogs.
FESTIVALS
As of Nov 2014, the film has just been submitted to the following festivals: Berlin, Rotterdam, Hotdocs, É Tudo Verdade (São Paulo, Brazil)
CONTACT
Paulo Alberton
Pauloalberton2@gmail.com
www.pauloalberton.com
