NEWS

28. 5. 2004
ROCK IN RIO – The World’s Largest Music Festival

 

Held under the auspices of the United Nations and with the support of the European Union.

Michael Havas has been invited to speak on May 28th at the BETTER WORLD FORUM, one of four stages at this year’s Rock in Rio Festival, held this year in Lisbon, Portugal.

Havas will be joined by the renowned Brazilian lyricist and composer Ivo Meirelles – who will describe his work with the poor children of Brazil’s favellas – and Bill Shipsey, Irish president of Amnesty International and chairman of the Irish Academy of the Performing Arts´. Also present will be Ailton Krenak, an important Brazilian Indian leader who is currently working with Havas and Jens Terrahe of Berlin on a film about dying languages called BRAZILIAN DREAM.

Michael Havas has been asked to speak on culture within the post-communist society of the Czech Republic.

Other guest speakers at the BETTER WORLD FORUM – which closes on Sunday, June 6th, will include British musician Peter Gabriel, Brazilian author Paolo Cuehlo, New Zealand journalist Peter Arnett and Eveline Herfkens, Kofi Annan´s UN co-ordinator for the Millennium Development Goals Campaign.

The official website is http://rockinrio-lisboa.sapo.pt/index.html?lang=en

 

24. 1. 2003
Brazilian Dream Press Release

 

A grant from MEDIA, the European Union Film Committee, to T & G Films of Berlin and Heart of Europe Media in Prague, together with an agreement with ASPEKTE, the cultural magazine of ZDF, Germany’s second public broadcaster channel, has made it possible for author/director Michael Havas and co-author Jens Terrahe to take their Brazilian Dream project a step further.

During the European Spring of 2003 a small team will travel to the south-eastern region of Brazil and visit the Krenak community on the banks of the Rio Doce near Belo Horizonte. The team will include author/director Michael Havas from Prague and co-author/producer Jens Terrahe from Berlin.

During a 3 week stay in Brazil the group plans to film material for a preliminary pilot film about the last 70 speakers of the Krenak language, comparing their current condition with that recorded in 1915 by Russian anthropologist, Henrikh Henrikhovich Maniser. Maniser, who is credited with what may have been the first modern scientific expedition in the history of anthropology, recorded the Krenaks´ vocabulary, grammar and music. The contents of his manuscripts will be compared with the state of the Krenak community as it lives today. The theme of the film is Language Death.

After filming in Brazil, the group plans to travel to St Petersburg to cover the Maniser archives. Relatives of the original 1915 expedition team as well as other experts familiar with Maniser’s extraordinary work will be interviewed.

The film will feature Ailton Krenak, former politician, who fought for the return of his people from a missionary reservation in Sao Paulo to the banks of the Rio Doce (where Maniser met up with them in 1915) and who has re-married back into his own culture. Laurita Maria Felix, Ailton´s mother-in-law, will provide much of the authentic cultural background as she battles for the survival of the Krenak language.

Linguist and consultant for Brazilian Dream is Professor David Crystal, OBE, world-renowned linguist and editor of the Cambridge Encyclopaedia. In 2000 he published Language Death. David has spent many years in Brazil and is one of the foremost champions of minority languages.

The resulting pilot film will be used to raise finance for a major feature documentary to be shot next year in time for the Barcelona conference in 2004.

The long term goal of the producers is to help the Krenak language attain UNESCO status as an example of “Intangible World Heritage”.

 

For further information see www.heart-of-europe.com or www.tg-films.com 
or contact michael.havas@heart-of-europe.cz or jens@tg-films.com