Vincent Moon and Nana Vasconcelos: The world’s hidden music rituals

83,606 views ・ 2014-11-14

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:12
Vincent Moon: How can we use computers,
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cameras, microphones to represent the world
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in an alternative way,
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as much as possible?
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How, maybe, is it possible to use the Internet
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to create a new form of cinema?
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And actually, why do we record?
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Well, it is with such simple questions in mind
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that I started to make films 10 years ago,
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first with a friend, Christophe Abric.
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He had a website, La Blogothèque,
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dedicated to independent music.
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We were crazy about music.
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We wanted to represent music in a different way,
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to film the music we love, the musicians we admired,
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as much as possible, far from the music industry
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and far from the cliches attached to it.
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We started to publish every week
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sessions on the Internet.
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We are going to see a few extracts now.
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From Grizzly Bear in the shower
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to Sigur Ros playing in a Parisian cafe.
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From Phoenix playing by the Eiffel Tower
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to Tom Jones in his hotel room in New York.
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From Arcade Fire in an elevator
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in the Olympia
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to Beirut going down a staircase in Brooklyn.
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From R.E.M. in a car
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to The National around a table at night
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in the south of France.
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From Bon Iver playing with some friends
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in an apartment in Montmartre
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to Yeasayer having a long night,
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and many, many, many more
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unknown or very famous bands.
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We published all those films
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for free on the Internet,
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and we wanted to share
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all those films and represent music
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in a different way.
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We wanted to create another type of intimacy
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using all those new technologies.
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At the time, 10 years ago actually,
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there was no such project on the Internet,
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and I guess that's why the project we were making, the Take Away Shows,
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got quite successful,
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reaching millions of viewers.
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After a while, I got a bit —
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I wanted to go somewhere else.
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I felt the need to travel and to discover some other music,
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to explore the world,
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going to other corners,
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and actually it was also
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this idea of nomadic cinema, sort of, that I had in mind.
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How could the use of new technologies and the road fit together?
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How could I edit my films in a bus
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crossing the Andes?
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So I went on five-year travels
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around the globe.
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I started at the time in the digital film and music label collection Petites Planètes,
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which was also an homage to French filmmaker Chris Marker.
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We're going to see now a few more extracts
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of those new films.
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From the tecno brega diva of northern Brazil, Gaby Amarantos
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to a female ensemble in Chechnya.
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From experimental electronic music in Singapore with One Man Nation
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to Brazilian icon Tom Zé singing on his rooftop in São Paolo.
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From The Bambir, the great rock band from Armenia
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to some traditional songs
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in a restaurant in Tbilisi, Georgia.
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From White Shoes, a great retro pop band from Jakarta, Indonesia
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to DakhaBrakha, the revolutionary band from Kiev, Ukraine.
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From Tomi Lebrero
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and his bandoneon and his friends in Buenos Aires, Argentina,
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to many other places
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and musicians around the world.
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My desire was to make it as a trek.
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To do all those films,
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it would have been impossible
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with a big company behind me,
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with a structure or anything.
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I was traveling alone with a backpack —
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computer, camera, microphones in it.
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Alone, actually, but just with local people,
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meeting my team, which was absolutely not
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professional people, on the spot there,
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going from one place to another
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and to make cinema as a trek.
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I really believed that cinema could be
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this very simple thing:
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I want to make a film and you're going to give me a place to stay for the night.
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I give you a moment of cinema and you offer me a capirinha.
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Well, or other drinks,
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depending on where you are.
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In Peru, they drink pisco sour.
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Well, when I arrived in Peru, actually,
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I had no idea about what I would do there.
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And I just had one phone number, actually,
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of one person.
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Three months later,
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after traveling all around the country, I had recorded 33 films,
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only with the help of local people,
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only with the help of people
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that I was asking all the time the same question:
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What is important to record here today?
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By living in such a way,
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by working without any structure,
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I was able to react to the moment
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and to decide, oh, this is important to make now.
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This is important to record that whole person.
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This is important to create this exchange.
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When I went to Chechnya,
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the first person I met
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looked at me and was like,
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"What are you doing here?
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Are you a journalist? NGO? Politics?
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What kind of problems are you going to study?"
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Well, I was there to research
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on Sufi rituals in Chechnya, actually —
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incredible culture of Sufism in Chechnya,
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which is absolutely unknown outside of the region.
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As soon as people understood
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that I would give them those films —
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I would publish them online for free under a Creative Commons license,
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but I would also really give them to the people
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and I would let them do what they want with it.
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I just want to represent them in a beautiful light.
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I just want to portray them in a way that
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their grandchildren are going to look at their grandfather,
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and they're going to be like,
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"Whoa, my grandfather is as cool as Beyoncé." (Laughter)
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It's a really important thing.
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(Applause)
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It's really important,
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because that's the way
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people are going to look differently at their own culture, at their own land.
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They're going to think about it differently.
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It may be a way to maintain a certain diversity.
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Why you will record?
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Hmm. There's a really good quote
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by American thinker Hakim Bey
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which says, "Every recording
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is a tombstone of a live performance."
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It's a really good sentence to keep in mind
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nowadays in an era saturated by images.
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What's the point of that?
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Where do we go with it?
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I was researching. I was still keeping this idea in mind:
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What's the point?
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I was researching on music, trying to pull,
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trying to get closer to a certain origin of it.
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Where is this all coming from?
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I am French. I had no idea about
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what I would discover, which is a very simple thing:
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Everything was sacred, at first,
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and music was spiritual healing.
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How could I use my camera,
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my little tool, to get closer
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and maybe not only capture the trance
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but find an equivalent, a cine-trance, maybe,
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something in complete harmony
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with the people?
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That is now my new research I'm doing
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on spirituality, on new spirits around the world.
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Maybe a few more extracts now.
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From the Tana Toraja funeral ritual in Indonesia
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to an Easter ceremony in the north of Ethiopia.
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From jathilan, a popular trance ritual
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on the island of Java,
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to Umbanda in the north of Brazil.
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The Sufi rituals of Chechnya
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to a mass in the holiest church of Armenia.
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Some Sufi songs in Harar,
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the holy city of Ethiopia,
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to an ayahuasca ceremony
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deep in the Amazon of Peru with the Shipibo.
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Then to my new project, the one I'm doing now
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here in Brazil, named "Híbridos."
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I'm doing it with Priscilla Telmon.
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It's research on the new spiritualities all around the country.
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This is my quest, my own little quest of what I call experimental ethnography,
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trying to hybrid all those different genres,
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trying to regain a certain complexity.
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Why do we record?
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I was still there.
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I really believe cinema teaches us to see.
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The way we show the world
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is going to change the way we see this world,
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and we live in a moment where the mass media
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are doing a terrible, terrible job
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at representing the world:
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violence, extremists,
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only spectacular events,
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only simplifications of everyday life.
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I think we are recording
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to regain a certain complexity.
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To reinvent life today,
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we have to make new forms of images.
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And it's very simple.
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Muito obrigado.
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(Applause)
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Bruno Giussani: Vincent, Vincent, Vincent.
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Merci. We have to prepare for the following performance,
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and I have a question for you, and the question is this:
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You show up in places like the ones you just have shown us,
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and you are carrying a camera
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and I assume that you are welcome
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but you are not always absolutely welcome.
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You walk into sacred rituals,
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private moments in a village, a town,
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a group of people.
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How do you break the barrier
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when you show up with a lens?
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VM: I think you break it with your body,
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more than with your knowledge.
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That's what it taught me to travel,
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to trust the memory of the body
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more than the memory of the brain.
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The respect is stepping forward,
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not stepping backward, and I really think that
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by engaging your body in the moment, in the ceremony,
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in the places, people welcome you
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and understand your energy.
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BG: You told me that most of the videos
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you have made are actually one single shot.
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You don't do much editing.
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I mean, you edited the ones for us
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at the beginning of the sessions because of the length, etc.
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Otherwise, you just go in and capture
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whatever happens in front of your eyes
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without much planning, and so is that the case?
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It's correct?
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VM: My idea is that I think that
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as long as we don't cut, in a way,
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as long as we let the viewer watch,
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more and more viewers are going to feel closer,
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are going to get closer to the moment,
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to that moment and to that place.
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I really think of that as a matter of respecting the viewer,
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to not cut all the time from one place to another,
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to just let the time go.
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BG: Tell me in a few words about your new project,
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"Híbridos," here in Brazil.
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Just before coming to TEDGlobal, you have actually
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been traveling around the country for that.
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Tell us a couple of things.
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VM: "Híbridos" is — I really believe Brazil,
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far from the cliches, is the greatest religious country in the world,
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the greatest country in terms of spirituality
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and in experimentations in spiritualities.
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And it's a big project I'm doing over this year,
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which is researching in very different regions of Brazil,
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in very different forms of cults,
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and trying to understand how people live together
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with spirituality nowadays.
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BG: The man who is going to appear onstage momentarily,
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and Vincent's going to introduce him,
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is one of the subjects of one of his past videos.
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When did you do a video with him?
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VM: I guess four years ago,
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four years in my first travel.
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BG: So it was one of your first ones in Brazil.
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VM: It was amongst the first ones in Brazil, yeah.
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I shot the film in Recife,
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in the place where he is from.
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BG: So let's introduce him. Who are we waiting for?
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VM: I'll just make it very short.
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It's a very great honor for me to welcome onstage
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one of the greatest Brazilian musicians of all time.
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Please welcome Naná Vasconcelos.
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BG: Naná Vasconcelos!
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(Applause)
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(Music)
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Naná Vasconcelos: Let's go to the jungle.
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(Applause)
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