LIGHTS, CAMERA, KITCHEN, BED AND ACTION.

By the age of 4, Maria Rosa left her bedroom towards the living room, where her parents were arguing energetically. “Is this a scene, or is this for real?”, she asked. “Sweety, we’re discussing a project”, answered the father. “But Is it from AP43?”, she insisted. Hearding the confirmation, she sighed: “I thought that you were fighting for real”.

The girl’s mistake, she is now 6 years old, isn’t associated to her age. It is just that in there, where she lives, inside the 43^rd apartment of a building in the middle of Itaim Bibi, reality and fantasy  are mixed up all the time, thanks to the project headed by her parents, the actor’s director Nara Sakarê, 47, and the screenwriter and content director André Collazzi, 39. Everyday, from 10am to 5pm, Nara receives at home a group of actors that, after taking a coffee, spread all over the house. Some of them go to the bathroom, brush their teeth. Others go to the couple’s bedroom, undoing the bed, changing clothes. Not even Maria Rosa’s bedroom escapes, and her dolls are all rearranged. Some of them do the dishes, cook, all acording to the necessities each one of them has. The idea is to offer a real life for the characters to develop themselves.

“We are a reserch group that focus on rethinking the work of the actor and the way to do cinema. There’s no such thing in Brasil today”, says Nara. It all began nearly 3 years ago, when she started to suffer with the lack of training structure on the group of actors that she was working with. “When you’re in an empty room, you need to imagine yourself using things, and that may go against the development of the scene.” The solution she founded was to bring the actors inside her house. André agreeded with the project and, although he spends most of the day at his production company, “Prosperidade Filmes”, he takes part in all of the decisions on what courses should the project go as well as the characters created in there. Sometimes, it became a full-lenght film, a short film, and, most of the time, just scenes. It’s not the final result that matters. “What they provide in here is the possibility for an actor to develop a character without the perspective to turn that into something concrete”, explains the actress who was born in Rio, Nicole Cordery. “After joining this group, my work has completely changed”. The positive feedback has spread and, quickly, the project unexpectedly grew into large proportions. “There are several actors who wish to participate, directors that call us asking us to test their scripts in the apartment”, says Collazzi. “We’re very aware that we are not willing to became a school. Nara is very selective when it comes to bring someone inside our house.”

PRESERVED PRIVACY

Trying to maintain their privacy, have divided the house in two, with objects and food from the apartment and those brought by the actors; a cabinet of family’s daily tableware and another one with plates and glasses that can be used for the scenes. “It is very brave to offer your own house to this project like this”, tells the actor, who was born in Pernambuco, Bruno Belarmino. “That’s why we take care of everything as if they were our own.” With the bounds and rules established, the couple guarantees that the biggest challenge isn’t to preserve the family’s intimacy, but to make the AP43 project grow. “The first step has been taken with the recently approval by the Rouanet Law for going after the R$1,2 million sponsorship to finance one year of research”, says Collazzi. “It is not the ideal model, but it’s the only one we can count on, here in Brazil”. Therefore, the AP43’s focus is to find sponsors and partners, so one of the most important national cinema incubator project thrives between the walls of an apartment in São Paulo.

Photo: Nara Sakare and André Collazzi’s bedroom, also used as filming set. On the other page, the couple poses in the living room of AP43

PDF: https://www.itau.com.br/_arquivosestaticos/Itau/PDF/personnalite/revista_personnalite_31.pdf