Alison Handel
Instituto Pólis
São Paulo, Brazil
Time flies when you’re having fun, and this summer certainly proved that. Our internship period at Instituto Pólis concluded at the end of July, it seems like we just got here, so we had our last week in São Paulo to do as we pleased.
With all this newfound free time I dove head first into shooting for our documentary and spent most of the week conducting interviews with local people we met through friends and work colleagues. I think I’m one of the only human beings on the planet that likes paper work, so working at Pólis was very fun and interesting for me, but I found this past week of shooting the most intellectually, creatively and personally rewarding part of the summer.
I had a very specific idea about what I wanted to do with the doc when we were brainstorming ideas for it back in New York, but what I ended up doing was very different than what I initially set out to do. Originally I envisioned a very academic approach to the story we were going to tell, but as I talked to Paulistanos (the name given to residents of the city of São Paulo) and got to know the city better, I found myself wanting to tell a much more personal story.
Of course an academic approach would have been valid as well, but I’m realizing more and more that statistics and theory can only take us so far. Yes, my potential viewers would have known the number of new apartment buildings built in SP in the last five years, but it is unlikely they would have felt solidarity with and or empathy for the city’s residents.
We learned a lot at the office, but I would argue I learned just as much carrying out my interviews. I was inspired, touched and intrigued by the stories my interviewees relayed to me. They each provided a very different perspective on city life, gentrification and the direction SP (and the country at large) is heading in. Despite the individuality of each story, common threads bound them. Some answers I expected and others I found very surprising. I’m certain our viewers will feel the same.
Now comes the not so exciting part, editing it all together to make something coherent and impactful. There is a lot of footage to comb through and there is certainly more to be shoot, especially on the New York end, but I am incredibly excited about the direction we are heading in. I am hopeful that our finished product will be educational, insightful and entertaining.
