Associação Cultural Videobrasil

In this century, cinema, radio and TV were the three new languages of man. Not by chance, income concentration, coupled with technological development, has fed on these languages to create the alternative dream of utopias that aimed to socialize the means of production and the fruits of progress, since the beginning of the century. Towards the century’s end, on the eve of Aquarius, we have witnessed the phenomenon of information concentration that may or may not make knowledge into a common good.

Today, technology offers us two new languages that can potentially change the fate of mankind: video and computers. Let us focus on the first one: video. VIDEOBRASIL, taking place for the fourth time this year, intends to become a major stimulus to this new technical, artistic and, above all, political alphabetization process.

Video is here to stay, so it might as well stay as a tool with which for society to democratize knowledge and creativity. Thus, we will award creators, provide financing and stimulus to ten new productions, debate, showcase productions and keep fighting for the Free Antenna, so that television products are broadcast to where the audiences are.

The MIS is renovated in both its building and its ideas. In addition to this annual celebration, the museum will feature a permanent video screening hall at the disposal of creators. In doing so, we hope this other language will become a major tool for social change. 

The IV VIDEOBRASIL marks the resumption of activities at the MIS. We have spent the last one and a half year implementing the unpostponable changes the organization required. We have solved issues in the building, eliminating leaks, overhauling the dangerous wiring, converting the auditorium into a venue for film, video and audiovisual screenings and projections that can also host and record live music performances, creating a climate-controlled archive storage facility (a bona fide ICU for audiovisual memory), implementing a video room, reviewing our documentation criteria – in short, redefining the organization’s profile.

It’s a start. There is much left to be done, like completing the photo lab overhaul, computerizing the Museum’s documentation system, equipping the image and sound labs, opening a bar (why not?) to enable longer visits and increased user comfort, and preparing the MIS for the future by endowing it with the funds needed for purchasing collection items and hiring skilled researchers. And this is not to mention utopias.

When we took charge of the MIS, in addition to our daily activities, we were handed over lots of leakages, an Ikebana exhibit and nothing else. Today, we deliver our users an organization en route to renewal. The IV VIDEOBRASIL symbolizes this change.

Here’s hoping that next year, the V VIDEOBRASIL will keep growing and the MIS will keep changing, on track to its utopias.

The IV VIDEOBRASIL promises to replicate the success from the first three editions. It will be an event on par with the inauguration of the MIS’ new auditorium, the ideal venue for hosting it. The first hint of this success is the fact that over 200 pieces in VHS and U Matic have been submitted, an all-time high.

We created this Video Festival to replace the Super 8 film festivals we have sponsored and produced for ten years. This film gauge was designed to record family memories and wound up becoming an important medium for youthful expression in the 70s.

Although this is only its fourth edition, Festival VIDEOBRASIL is already the leading vehicle for independent video productions in Brazil. After being featured in the Festival, several producers have gone professional and found their space, some even in commercial TV. The number of artists and people interested in independent video is growing significantly each year, and they will soon have a special UHF channel to air their works.

Fotoptica feels utterly rewarded in having supported cultural activities for several decades now, especially those performed by young people. For many years now, we have been investing a considerable portion of our returns in encouraging photography, film and video, and we share the artistic and cultural milieu’s euphoria in finally seeing President Sarney enact the culture incentive law.

By authorizing cultural activity support-related expenses to be deducted from the income tax – within reasonable boundaries, of course –, this law will motivate several businesses to invest significant sums into art and culture. Video is certainly particularly attractive to its new sponsors, a modern, attractive medium for image creation.

We will create events, project artworks, seek new outlets, attract the multitudes of Brazilian youths who are eager to create, and call upon the new sponsors the new law will likely spawn. Because video is art. Because video is culture.