claudiatomaz.com

I started to write the idea for this script in 2003. In 2005 I submitted a treatment that was one of the 16 projects selected for Script&Pitch Workshops, a European learning experience in Advanced Scriptwriting supported by MEDIA Plus. On the first workshop in Italy, I was invited by Professor Jeff Rush to continue developing the script at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. A grant by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and FLAD (Portugal) allowed me to come to Philadelphia where Jeff Rush became my advisor while I continued to work on the script as well as in its visual research and director’s Lab.

synopsis

LIA is a young Brazilian girl. She's travelling abroad for the first time. She searches for a better life, thinking VASCO, a guy she met online, will marry her. She starts working at Helena’s florist, skateboarding through the city delivering flowers. HELENA had cancer recently, she's now ending her radiotherapy. ALEXANDER, Helena’s husband, is a 60 year-old painter finally getting some success. MARCIA, their daughter, is a fashion designer in collapse. She feels tired and lost in a chaotic life, full of trips and jet lag, replacing her void with Prozac and webcams chat lines on the internet.

It is the opening of Alexander’s greatest exhibition. At the art museum the family gets together but things go all wrong... That same night their lives will change... LIA is there to meet HELENA but ends up meeting WALTER, a Brazilian rapper and they get attracted. Anyway LIA gets the job at the florist. MARCIA arrives late, after a long day of work, still with jet lag and having just divorced JORGE that same afternoon. In the exhibition HELENA has a panic attack but Alexander can't leave, he's giving interviews. After an argument between father and daughter, Marcia drives her mother home.

Later that night, in a car accident ALEXANDER has a brain stroke and loses his ability to see colors. Without colors he can’t even look at his wife, the muse of his paintings. Without telling HELENA about the accident, ALEXANDER takes refuge in his studio at the beach house, far away from the city. HELENA stays alone at home, unsure of herself, having panic attacks, asking LIA for help while MARCIA is away traveling for work.

Each one feels alone, vulnerable and everyone has to struggle…

On the way, LIA discovers VASCO is bi-polar and he doesn’t even remember about the marriage. She wants to go live with WALTER but founds out he has another girlfriend. LIA feels like a stranger in the new city. Trying to understand more about herself she meets YIN, a young Chinese boy who works at the cyber café in front of the florist in the mall. He lives in a basement with his mother, practices kung fu and reads ‘the book of changes’ to LIA. He likes her, but he’s shy. YIN will get closer to LIA when VASCO attacks her in the mall and YIN saves her. JORGE - Marcia’s ex-husband - a writer in crises, is drinking too much, without being able to rebuild his life. ANNA, a young Ukrainian emigrant, single mother and airhostess, who has to flight all the time, is forced to leave her 7 years old daughter alone at home a few times. Arriving at the airport from another flight, without being able to reach her daughter, JORGE offers his help to ANNA. Together they go to the hospital with NINOTCHKA, who’s sick alone in the house. The girl has big blue eyes. She is one of those girls who always ask difficult question: What makes the waves move? Are we the same as a star? Through her eyes we discover connections that sometimes adults have forgotten.

ALEXANDER stays at the beach house trying to paint again: the despair takes him into a dark mood. HELENA is surprised finding a new family with LIA, who also helps to get MARCIA closer. NINOTCHKA is also evolved in that new network of friendship when LIA gets the accidental job of being her nanny while ANNA is away again. In Helena’s birthday, they all go together to the karaoke to sing. When they are having fun, a phone call from ALEXANDER, in his most desparate moment, close to suicide, creates a new movement for everyone. HELENA drives all night on the highway to meet ALEXANDER and finally discovers what’s going on. That night, back in her city, left alone, MARCIA search for company in a bar and ends being raped in a parking lot. The only person she calls is her ex-husband JORGE discovering, to her surprise, that he’s the only person she still trusts, but JORGE has no longer any feelings for her, being closer with ANNA…

All the story-lines intertwine, each person reacts differently and all of them have to CHANGE!

note of intentions - ideas on the background of the story

I wanted to write a story which could reflect person’s problems in our time in occidental big cities. So I chose to make a film with many different characters that could show us the complexity of our world.

I wanted to portray the incredible power one must have to live in this complex and mobile age.

With globalization and the greatest mobility of all times, everyone is a nomad. Without roots, we are foreigners everywhere. Trying to find our ‘home’ is an important task of nowadays. I started from the feeling of «no man’s land», and made the question: how can we find our balance and feel that we belong somewhere? Then I drew the destiny of characters that are all forced to re-think and re-build their lives.

To each character the same question: how to start again?

I wanted to discover how each person reacts in different ways to loss, to tension, to change. In different moments of our lives we have to search new paths and change, that’s part of life. The experience of emigration fit perfectly as a metaphor of those ideas. Being displaced, alone, away, trying to find a new and better life… all that having the social background of globalization, the abyss between rich and poor countries, the human circulation that it creates. The movement around the world creates the support for talking about the inner flow of souls in a world in constant and fast movement.

visual style

Visually, the film will be made in a fluid style; extremely mobile, with flexible, continuous shots, recorded in clear, white light illuminating the mega-city. The city is shown as a futuristic and modern city. The set is a vast, overpopulated global metropolis of brilliant light effects on the glass-sided skyscrapers, reflecting and refracting light and other images. The glass walls mirror the busy city streets... But the important will be the FACES, the gestures, the expressions of the characters.

creative collaboration with artists

From its conception and in directing this film I intend to work in close creative collaboration with artists from various areas, Portuguese and foreigners. The idea is to enrich the film through their contribution and, at the same time perhaps, open up new avenues for promotion and distribution.

Painting, fashion, dance, rap and graffiti are some of the ingredients.

experimental LAB as research

This LAB is been suported by a Grant from Gulbenkian / Flad + Temple University, Philadelphia, where Cláudia Tomaz is working as an artist in residency since November 2005 to December 2006.

Experimental Lab Filmmaker Project (visual, sound, editing research) by herself and with students and artists, Media Art classes and Scriptwriting with Professor Jeff Rush, at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA, are all part of the project. See also HolonFilmLAB

behind the LAB

By bringing together various artists during the film’s preparation, I want to create a LAB where cinematic matters can be raised and developed; whether they be matters of method, technique, form, setting, camera movement, sound edition and mix or whatever. This should be an experiment in sharing and joint creation, oriented by the film’s director and whose starting point is the screenplay and the diverse underlying questions inherent to the film.