Interview Marcelo Rezende
Kiko Mistrorigo – Brazil is very novelty oriented. I remember when we started out, along with Arnaldo Antunes, and also with Augusto de Campos and his son, Cid Campos (we used to talk more back in the early 1990s). Augusto used to say that “he wanted a letter that would spin like this,” or some other thing that did not exist yet. We would seeka technical solution to fulfill those wishes. In our crew, we were all the children of a very bad situation, which was the inability to bring equipment to Brazil and have thetechnology that was being produced in Europe and the United States.
The technology for carrying out those projects already existed in the world,but not in Brazil; was that the context?
KM – It did not exist here. We had the Computer Act. You could not bring anything into Brazil, it was considered a crime. To the justice system, it was the same thing for you to bring a kilo of cocaine or the same weight in equipment from a trip. It was trafficking, it was illegal. You just couldn’t do it. You were forbidden to bring technology in your baggage. There used to be a widespread terror, it was the end of the dictatorship; they used to say that the Federal Police might break into production companies. Theoretically, if you owned something imported, you were hampering the technological development of Brazil, this was the rationale behind the act. That’s an ancient mode of thinking, a stupid one, and in fact it represented a lobby of the local industry. It was total blindness. But the fact remains that it resulted in an atmosphere in which the tiniest opportunity had to be seized to the maximum. Whenever we had access to the manuals of these new technologies, we would read them to use any piece of information that could be used. And nothing was self-explanatory. The relationship with technology, however, was also different than today. We used to have no fetish whatsoever with technology.When we met Arnaldo and Augusto, and showed them the new things we had discovered, whatwe wanted was to address a problem. Thus, the lack of technology was a determinant factor to the final result of many works. It is interesting to consider the way in which Brazil inserted itself. We were completely isolated, in every sense (especially technologically and culturally), and that condition led us to try and break through that blockade, that lack of participation from the country. When the Nome video (with Arnaldo Antunes) was shown outside Brazil, it was received in a curious way: artists and the people who had easier access to all of the new resources found our solutions odd. It was different. And these solutions resulted in a different language.
When you started all this work and research, what were you personally interested in? Was it just the technological aspect?KM – We wanted to make animation. We wanted to produce animation. We did not have a focus on what type of animation, but being in love with technology meant that we could solve problems that we were unable to before. We realized right from the start that technology brought about certain dangers, such as digital manipulation of images, a somewhat indiscriminate use. That could be seen here in magazines, when the illustrations in the pages seemed to show more of what a program could do than anything else. For us, the interesting thing was to do what we wanted in the best possible way. Before, people used to ask, in awe, “Was this all made using a computer?” Now they say, “Well, since it’s all computer made, you can deliver it tomorrow, can’t you?”
And what was your first project to reach large audiences via the TV?
KM – The first one was for Castelo Rá-Tim-Bum, a children’s show on the TV Cultura channel. We made a sketch on Brazilian poetry. We researched the poets and poems that might work within the thirty seconds that we had. It was all drawn using the mouse.
Celia Catunda – But I guess our relation with poetry was casual, rather than based on a specific interest. It comes from the fact that we had worked a lot with text.
CC – Our goal has always been working with television. We wanted to speak to a larger audience. We were very dissatisfied with what was offered to children at that time, it was the peak of Xuxa [a popular host of children’s programs in Brazil] and her show. We were thinking about the possibility of providing another type of information to thataudience. Something different, something better. Doing the poetry section for Castelo Rá-Tim-Bum fulfilled all of those wishes. We never considered simplifying the content inorder to please everyone. We were speaking to children, we wanted something fun and interesting to them, but it was not our plan to make things simpler because they were being shown to children on open TV, to make it all more vulgar. For us, the most important thing was to realize that children quickly accepted and enjoyed what we did, the way webelieved it should be done. We took poetry by Ferreira Gullar, Paulo Leminski, Mario Quintana, Manuel Bandeira; not poetry made for children, but poetry that children might like. We have never believed in offering “minor” content to large audiences. We didn’t believe in it then and we don’t believe in it now. Our Fishtronaut is like that, a character that deals with complex issues. Many animators who work or have worked with us also educated themselves through the information conveyed on the Fishtronaut’s adventures,while producing those very adventures, an animation for children. Nowadays, it is the most viewed show on Brazilian cable TV. That is something to think about. People do not want to see only what is supposedly meant for them.