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Copyright © 2016 - Rhinocerus All rights reserved. Prohibited the reproduction, storage or total or partial transmission, in any form.
Texts, photos and graphic development, cover – Reinaldo Amaral English Translation – Mariangela Alves da Silva Portuguese review – Celia Amaral
Review final PT/EN – Luiz Marcos Vasconcelos Projects – Renato Gomes www.reinaldoamaral.net
INFO@reinaldoamaral.net Publisher – RHINOCERUS
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This book is a toast to patience, confidence, friendship and understanding. Thiare Maia Amaral, Cheers! Here’s to us!
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ONE THING IS ONE THING ANOTHER THING HERE
IS THE SAME THING
São Paulo, 1985, Amapola, musical, rock opera. Twenty-six actors, seven musicians, the author, the composer and the regent. A choreographer, a director, stage managers and assis-
tants. This was just on stage. Backstage, besides the lighting assistants, sound assistants, and stage machinery operators, there were forty-six sponsors, media professionals and the marketing team, everything needed to put the play on every day.
During the play’s interval soon after the premiere, Ricardo Petraglia asked me if the cast was the same as when he had been invited to the show. I said, “yes, why?” He didn’t say anything. He came back one week later with a team of reporters from the Globo television network’s program Fantástico, and for a few days there were generators and smart equipment at the front of the theater. I remember when the report went out. A whole segment featured the rehearsals, the dressing rooms, brief interviews with the cast, before finally the anchor announced, “highlights from Amapola Opera, the musical playing in
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São Paulo.” On Wednesday, as usual, we arrived at the theater to start working, rehearsing the choreography, the choir and the soloists, and to maintain the sceneries and lighting, but this time we were excited, thrilled with the reach of the publicity we’d been given. At last, the results of two years’ work were beginning to show. After all, more than 700 actors and singers had been auditioned, and there had been a lot of rehearsing and rewriting before the curtains had finally been opened. That week looked promising! It would be definitive, deserved recognition for so much work. But when we arrived, POW! The theater had been closed down!
After a routine inspection, the Municipal Engineering Department had listed a few demands that had to be met within the following thirty days, when they would return to carry out another inspection and release the license which was only provisional at the time. There had been an exposed power cable outside the cable ducts. That’s all, a piece of wire! The lighting system was digital, sophisticated, so it was just the end of a piece of wire that was out of place and had been forgotten. The Aplicado Theater, on Brigadeiro Luiz Antônio Avenue, was an old, crumbling house with poor plumbing, leaks, and infiltration problems, which had a program as bad as its facilities. But the stage and audience area were perfect for staging the opera. The rent was cheap for the reasons mentioned and we could work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week because there wouldn’t be anything else programmed. Better still, we could build the project’s original scenery and lighting, with no adaptations. To do this we had to completely rebuild the theater, from the septic tank to the roof. We built a new stage with a lighting structure and renovated 300 seats for the audience… New dressing rooms were built. We renovated the roof and the ceiling and eliminated the infiltration and leaks. The restrooms were rebuilt. We also had the place fully carpeted, which is very good for the acoustics! The box office, payment systems, electronic turnstiles and all the accounting were computerized. We were a BETA system, a sort of test-drive for the future subway turnstiles.
The inspection was carried out at the beginning of the week, on the cast’s day off, when there
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was no one at the theater. The report, the demands and the deadlines had been delivered to the theater owner, just one man who conveniently failed to notify our producers. On the scheduled date nobody showed up and the theater was closed down. It remained like this until the play was withdrawn to cut our losses. So we gave back an empty new theater to just one man. I bought a farm and started keeping chickens. I got married to her ladyship and we had two beautiful children. For more than 20 years I wrote and painted the flora and fauna, and the man of Central Brazil. Central Brazil, 1986. I gave the name Interiors to the series of paintings of the architecture of the beautiful city of Pirenópolis. But I did something different. I painted the city from the inside: the interior of the houses and monuments. This reflected the time, the customs, and carefully, secretly portrayed the inhabitants. It was in this forgotten part of Brazil that I raised my questions about man. I had tried Nietzsche’s Germany, Cervantes’ Castilian Spain, and Dante’s Florence but there had been no echo. It was in that little town where I heard the answers of the inner man, the lonely man. Rio de Janeiro, 2013. By the time I had created Cara Carioca, I had also created my own tool: the subway. Forty stations, 1.8 million passengers a day. An ideal group for researching the profile of the people of Rio de Janeiro, the Cariocas, who would also be the public at the exhibition, a huge exhibition in a giant gallery: the Carioca subway station in Rio de Janeiro. But I just didn’t have 46 sponsors… Rio de Janeiro, 2016. A chronicle is a short report set in time and the subject is generally only partly insinuated. Readers must use their imagination and draw their own conclusions. A photo, a painting, a text, each in its own way is a snapshot of a person. Whatever it may be, there is a link that connects the moment to the being, and that is what counts. That’s why, the way I see it, paintings, photographs and texts are chronicles.
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CHAPTER ONE Studio
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Lapa 2011 Rio de Janeiro Brazil
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CHAPTER TWO Charcoal
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April 27, 2011, 2:39:25 pm
For some reason, I mentioned to Ferreira Gullar in a conversation during his photo session that Tereza Aragão had introduced us to each other at the time of Opinião Theater, in 69. “I thought I recognized you,” he said! Once the session was over, as he was at the door waiting for the elevator, he warned me, “don’t be like Siron, who only turned up with the picture eleven months later…” July 15, 2016, 10:12:43 pm
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charcoal on wood 185cm X 137,5cm
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Ferreira Gullar
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Marcos Saboya
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Valentina Seabra
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Jorge Barata
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Lucia Fontainha
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Cyro Elias
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JoĂŁo Velho
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CHAPTER THREE Painting
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RAIN
FLIP FLOPS AND
TITANIUM DIOXIDE
As I was coming into the studio, I realized that the paintings had disappeared. They had
been leaning against a wall for easy handling, but they were no longer there! The front of the studio was completely flooded, right where the paintings had been. A few inches of water. In
desperation, I rolled up my pants and walked through the floods until I found my paintings, fully under water, where they had been swept during the storm the previous night.
Manoel helped me to put them in a safe place, where they could dry off. There were more than 30 pieces of art, all sopping wet. I helped to unblock the gutters and remove all the debris brought in by the storm. An Eveready battery, a Playboy magazine, a pair of Bermuda shorts, the arm from an armchair, a toothbrush, a refrigerator shelf, T-shirts, part of a car bumper, a flashlight and several pairs of panties. Dozens of CDs. “Look at the culprit!” said Manoel pointing to an old, pale blue flip-flop which was well worn down at the back. It had blocked the entrance to the drain. The water which should have flowed down the drainpipe had accumulated and the guttering, which couldn’t support the weight, had twisted, leaving the contents to come pouring into the room. I can see what’s going on! Shit!
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Everything that morning had been unusual and, in my state of madness, I linked the objects found in the gutter to the noises, crackles and crashes that I’d heard during the night as I slept in the studio. The noises had been different, depending on what was being tossed about. Some had been strident, others had been muffled. In some cases, there had not only been the sound of an article’s impact, but also the time it spent rolling around until it caught on something. I had got used to the noise and at times I played a guessing game instead of counting sheep. I spent hours imagining the objects based on the sounds they made during the night until I fell asleep. Now, looking at the aftermath, I suppose I got all my interpretation attempts all wrong. Well… To understand all of those noises and what they had done on my roof, we need to be familiar with the studio’s surroundings.
Why? The sound resulting from the impact had produced an almost orgasmic sensual pleasure. The 2 shed occupied an area of around 300 m , with an average ceiling height of 7 meters, which was covered with a thin, resistant layer of aluminum roof tiles. The entire system acted as a huge tambourine. In the summer it was like a big oven too, as well as being a tambourine at night.
Where? The stairway, alongside the sloping sidewalk – with six wide steps spread over twenty-some meters and blended in with the sidewalk itself – that marked the boundary where the Lapa district ended and the Santa Tereza neighborhood began.
A
Traditionally, the intellectuals, academics, artists, military personnel and politicians who live in Santa Tereza are attracted by its historical and cultural characteristics, as well as by the quality
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of life found in the neighborhood. The district of Santa Tereza grew up around the monastery of the same name, in the eighteenth century. At first it was the upper class of the time that lived there, so several large houses and mansions inspired by French architecture were built, many of which are still there today. The neighborhood has received a lot of European immigrants all through its existence. Around 1850, the region was ostensibly inhabited by people who were fleeing from the yellow fever epidemic in the city. As it lies on higher ground, this region was less affected by the epidemic than the surrounding neighborhoods. Santa Tereza has a gastronomic area, especially around Guimarães Square, the bohemian area of the neighborhood. The district has positioned itself as one of the main tourist attractions in Rio de Janeiro and is considered by many as the Montmartre of the city, due to the large number of artists who own studios and live in the area. The district, popularly known as Santa by the cariocas, features several stairways, hills, and winding alleys which connect it to the nearby districts of Centro, Lapa, Glória, Laranjeiras, Bairro de Fátima, Cosme Velho, Catumbi, Catete and Rio Comprido
B
Lapa is a middle-class district in the downtown area of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Along its thirteen streets, there is a wide variety of bars, restaurants, night clubs and theme pubs, which cater to all tastes. It is known as the birthplace of Carioca Bohemia and is also famous for its architecture, especially the Carioca Aqueduct, its main reference point and tourist attraction. This was built to operate as an aqueduct during Colonial Brazil, but has, since 1896, been used as a streetcar line connecting Rio’s downtown area to the Santa Tereza district.
C Fallet / Fogueteiro / Coroa The communities that make up this Pacifying Police Unit (UPP) area are located in the Santa Tereza and Rio Comprido districts. The first buildings on Fallet Hill date from 1931, when the
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employees of a traditional family that used to live in the surrounding area decided to move there. Coroa Hill was first occupied when residents, who had been expelled from the downtown area when Santo Antonio Hill was leveled, arrived in 1946. One interesting aspect of Fogueteiro Hill may draw visitors’ attention: most streets and alleys are named after African countries. So, it’s possible to visit the Residents’ Association on Libya Alley, or to walk cross Zaire Alley. The th Pacifying Police Unit in this region was the 15 to be installed and opened up on February 25, 2011. There are 13 favelas which are part of or surround Santa Tereza Hill, and we were on one of the streets that was an access route going up to Santa Tereza or down to Lapa. Consequently, the studio has some unusual neighbors.
Who? In mathematical terms: (A+B)C= my neighbors Daily life among the social classes was exciting. The couscous seller, the car washer, the smart sambista, the pool player, the drug dealer and the drug dealing bricklayer, the lady who fed cats, the candy seller with his cart and his nursing student son, the gorgeous woman who lived on the second floor of the building next to a house that was forever on sale, the retired man who got drunk every evening, the hawk in the large tree that attacked other birds and ruled over an empty kingdom. There were the temporary neighbors who waited in the queue at the hospital, owned by a health insurance company, on the other side of the street. The sounds and colors changed as night fell. Then there were conversations and the clink of glasses and bottles in the bars, the siren wail of ambulances and police cars, the neighbor’s trash metal band, the pagode (a popular samba style) and the gunfire. It was a busy night on the border! In the opposite direction, two blocks down the street, lay Lapa, “The Madhouse”. That is where danger lies. If I go down the street from the studio, I should always turn right and catch a taxi or bus and leave. If, however, I crossed Riachuelo Street, I would only come back three days later. This happened often. I trust the quality of my pigments when I paint with vinyl tempera. But I am often asked about the durability of this technique, the colors and the nuances, and the effect that time will have
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on them. I use industrial pigments that have been used in the construction industry for floors, walls, enclosures and have been used for wood burners since my grandmother’s time and are still in use. I mean, these pigments last forever. True, they are a bit dangerous to use. They don’t become discolored but they can kill with time. It was paint that killed Cândido Portinari. But, much to collectors’ dissatisfaction, the poison has been isolated and removed from one type of titanium dioxide which is nowadays even used in the food industry. Back to the studio, where there was overwhelming proof of the supreme quality and resistance of my tempera. One month later the paintings were dry, some of them had acquired new textures and other visual elements, but all of them were there… back… but now they were on the wall.
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vinyl tempera on wood 185cm X 137,5cm
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Vitoria Hadba
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Calixto Neto
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Daniel Senise
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Ferreira Gullar
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Manoel Duarte
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Suzanne White
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Michel Melamed
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Thiare Amaral
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Pedroca
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Fernanda Felix
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Luiza Mariane
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JosĂŠ Camarano
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Ana Rios
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Samir Abujamra
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Vitor Paiva
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JoĂŁo Velho
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Mariana Kaufman
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ZoĂŁozico Lopez
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Maria Beduina
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CHAPTER FOUR Photos
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APPLE RECALL
17,500 photos! Seventeen thousand, five hundred digital photographic files had disappeared from the planet’s memory! I received notification by email: “iMac, from mid-2010, go to an Apple representative to change the HD”. I immediately got in touch. Everything checked out, they would replace the HD in all computers of that generation free of charge. Shit! So that was why it wasn’t working! Well, it kind of worked. I had tried everything: formatting, running an antivirus, but it was still slow. After some calculations I decided I didn’t need to buy a new HD for the BKP. The Samsung 500 GB would do the job. There was enough room for the photos, the OS and other system files. I copied everything to the iMac and applied the complete Time Machine, including the photos. That was what I did. Fifty photo shoots, each shoot with about 350 photos of each model, stored on the external HD, in keeping with good file storage practice. I transferred everything to the desktop computer, the 27inch iMac, with its Intel Core i7 processor, a helluva machine! The backup would be finished in six hours, I’d change the HD and then I would have a brand-
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new computer! But no! That wasn’t what happened. The computer received the files but had multiple organ failure during the fateful BKP. After half the predicted time, it started to die… For ten minutes, I watched it suffer, when suddenly something appeared on the screen, Bad Mac, the face of death. The happy opening screen figure had a sad face now… game over. It had gone.
No computer and two years’ work lost. So, I weighed up the damage… OK, the computer was gone, it was expected, but what about the files, oh white man?
I had blown Cara Carioca away!
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Photoshoot
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Bruno Di Lullo
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Giovana Seabra
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Dino Amaral
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Fernando Albuquerque
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MarcĂŁo
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Alessandro Zoe
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Ferreira Gullar
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Rona Neves
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Tavinho Paes
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Caio Asa
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Cyro Elias
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Samir Abujamra
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Fernando Klipel
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Ana Paula Gonรงalves Nogueira
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Russo
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Amine Chalita
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O Cara e o Bar
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Mariana Da Costa Pinto
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Arthur Chaves
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Emma Wedmore
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Jaqueline Vojta
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Luiza Mariane
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Vitoria Hadba
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Adriana Portas
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Daniel Senise
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Rebecca Belsoff
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Pescosso
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CHAPTER FIVE Projects
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THE CARIOCA SUBWAY STATION
After having been left to fester for two years in the previous administration’s drawer, we got a phone call and – bingo! – we found ourselves in a meeting with the new board of MetroRio. Besides the three company officers, there were two people from marketing along with three representatives from the advertising agency in charge of the account. For forty minutes we presented the general concept behind the project. We moved to another room and then spent over an hour going through the most important points and features in detail. We were listened to carefully and cleared up any doubts. “It’s going to be expensive, but is an excellent project!” the marketing director finally said. “We think this is the best proposal of the year! It’s magnificent and enthralling. Let’s work together! Congratulations!” the commercial director exclaimed.
We left the MetroRio offices with a winning project! We knew about the high costs, but with the agency’s endorsement it didn’t matter how much the project would cost. After all, we were dealing with the people in charge. The following week we received the price lists and plans for all the media: the static and digital
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media, the promotional actions, a letter of presentation and everything else that was necessary for selling advertising space in subway stations. After two long hectic months, daily clashes with advertising executives’ egos and many sleepless nights, we realized that our business had changed. Formerly an art studio, we now operated in the advertising market… We were no longer artists, we were now the subway’s media agency… We went in and out of meetings and waiting rooms dealing with contractors… We had already experienced something similar based on the Culture Incentive Law which had expired after three years of unsuccessful fundraising. When we went back to the talks, the agency expressed a position that had previously remained unclear. “We are an operating company, not an advertising agency”. Then, I gave my farewell speech, “I’m an artist, not a salesperson!” CULTURE IS FIRST LADY ISSUE, I PRODUCE ART! When will they ever understand? th
Rock In Rio was back in town. It was the 30
anniversary of the first edition held back in 1985.
More than one million people in ten days. I targeted rock’n’roll! I looked for the producers of Rock In Rio 2015 and I sent them a project for analysis. One week later, I’d already received a positive reaction from the agency. They liked the material, but I should send it to the team in charge of the event. So that is what I did. “Now, the public and the artists will be international. We remanaged the team and adapted to the new format. We set up a photo studio at the city of rock and increased the number of photographers to five. We could also set up a studio for artists only. After ten days we will have enough material for a photo exhibition, a painting exhibition and a book. A beautiful commemorative material of the 30th anniversary and excellent content for the Rock In Rio museum!” The man listened in silence and hung up the phone. The RIO XXI project in 2011 was about friendship. In 2013, CARA CARIOCA was about the th Carioca profile. RIO450 in 2015, in turn, included the Carioca profile as part of the city’s 450
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anniversary celebrations. Also in 2015, HUMANOS E FELINOS (Humans and Felines) added picturesque city landscapes to the collection of portraits of the city. In 2016, it was simply FACES, this eBook version After five years of providing advertising and cultural services, I am publishing this book before it is transformed into the poetic imagination of those portrayed.
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2011 – 2016
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HUMANS & FELINES Project
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Click here for movie
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Click here for movie
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Click here for movie
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CARA CARIOCA Carioca’s Face
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RIO XXI
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THE END
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