LAB Ponte Nórdica Diversity Matters – Mentoring for Pitching 2022
In November, between the 12th and 15th, the first phase of the LAB with MixBrasil Festival took place, and on the 17th, 18th, 19th and 21st, this time in partnership with Goethe-Institut São Paulo, the second phase of the LAB took place: LAB Ponte Nórdica for Audiovisual Pitchings ≠ Diversity Matters, a four-day immersive laboratory in which Nordic and Brazilian mentors trained Brazilian professionals to be better able to face audiovisual pitches. We finished the third phase between the 22nd and 26th, in partnership with BrLab.
Curated and organized by Tatiana Groff, more than just preparing professionals for the important audiovisual pitches, the lab, as a training activity of the Ponte Nórdica Festival, aims to boost the production, promotion and distribution of features and shorts, documentaries and fiction, series, web series, as well as audiovisual works in VR and Games, with an emphasis on female professionals in general, indigenous people and black people, as well as LGBTQIAPN+ people.
And one of the international guests was the Swedish professional Camilla Larsson, who is the manager of the Göteborg Film Fund 2021 and programmer at the Gothenburg Film Festival and Draken Film. In addition to participating in the Laboratory, she also participated in the BRLab panel “Cabeça de Nêgo – innovative distribution and audience design experiences” – the Brazilian film “Cabeça de Nêgo” was awarded by the Göteborg Film Fund, in the Innovative Distribution category, in addition to having received several awards, including the best film of 2021 by Abraccine (Brazilian Association of Film Critics).
Another Swedish participant was Anna Serner, who is a lawyer and for 10 years served as CEO of the Swedish Film Institute, where she stood out, mainly, for the 50/50 initiative, in which Swedish films systematically worked with gender equality, increasing, in this way, the quality of all films produced in the country – the 50/50 initiative was achieved in 2014 in Sweden and in 2016 it was extended as a global movement at the Cannes Film Festival.
Coming from Denmark, another international mentor was Felicia Elisabeth Jackson, who is the head the audiovisual and media festival of the Nordic industry, THIS – NORDIC, with a focus on cinema and tv, series, games, animations, and immersive technologies. She also directs the festival of series AARHUS SERIES and is the Director of Communications at Filmby Aarhus. In addition to all that, she headed the Copenhagen TV Festival, CPH Transform and served as a senior consultant at DR-The Danish Broadcasting Corporation.
Coming from Finland, another international participant was Eero Tiainen, who is the creator and director of VR experiences and artistic leader of a pioneering metaverse experience, “Love Simulation EVE”, which is an innovative project that uses volumetric capture, photogrammetry and motion capture in content production – in partnership with the traditional MixBrasil festival, Eero taught at the Mário de Andrade Library, as part of MixLab Spcine, the masterclass “Virtual Reality as an Intimacy Machine – Creation Process of “Love Simulation EVE”.
Taking into account inclusion and the local public, Brazilian professionals were also part of these four days of immersion. And the professionals were: Erica de Freitas, who is a partner and director of Encantamento Filmes and consultant in executive production for Projeto Visionários; Kelly Castilho, who is a film director, founder of Confeitaria Filmes and who is part of the leadership of Mulheres do Audiovisual; Flavia Guerra, who is a journalist, documentary filmmaker and screenwriter; Deborah Osborn, who is a partner and creative producer of Bigbonsai’s entertainment projects; and Adhemar Oliveira, who is programming director at Espaço Itaú de Cinema and who has been dedicated to showing films for over 30 years.
The lab is aimed at local professionals interested in developing new tools and strategies for the financing and production of their projects, which deal with women, LGBTQIAPN+, black and indigenous people, in front of and behind the cameras. And the projects selected in 2022 were:
- “Trajetos e Afetos”, by Vitória Guilhermina Alves Moreira & Coletiva Curvas Produções;
- “Transmutação”, by Aline Domingos de Oliveira & Natan Ribeiro & coletivo Às Margens do Território;
- “Jana & Lana”, by Niara Nascimento Ferreira;
- “Balneário Flórida”, by Erika Fromm;
- “As Fulanas”, by Júlia Saraiva & coletivA Fulanas;
- “Amor à Duas”, by Juliana Firmina, Caroline Correia e Harun/Pedro Neves Teixeira;
- “Com você, eu vou”, by Arthur Jesus & coletivo Quilombarte;
- “Rastro”, by Vini Campos, Vilma Carla Martins e Rodrigo Santos Sousa.
About the selected projects and these four days of immersion and exchanges, curator and organizer Tatiana Groff commented: “The LAB # Diversity Matters is a fundamental tool that we can propose an immersive mentoring so that audiovisual professionals have greater contact with the audiovisual market with techniques for the improvement of its audiovisual initiatives, in order to have an added value to its proposals and that can effectively materialize the realization of audiovisual products both for Brazil and for a worldwide scope.”
The Ponte Nórdica Mentoring Laboratory for Audiovisual Pitchings ≠ Diversity Matters started in 2019 and reflects the commitment of the Danish Cultural Institute to the Ponte Nórdica Festival and the commitment of the Lab to diversity and race and gender equity, diversity, and inclusion, as well as the transparency and sustainability, this way proposing to stimulate emerging and established filmmakers for the market. There was a completely online edition in partnership with Spcine. The 2022 edition was organized by Danish Cultural Institute and by Ponte Nórdica and was supported by the Nordic Fund and Spcine.