Floresta Ativa: a short documentary for Saúde e Alegria in the Tapajós

The Floresta Ativa (Active Forest) program invested in water, tree nurseries, agroforestry systems, cooperatives, stingless beekeeping and community tourism in riverine, extractivist, quilombola and Indigenous communities in western Pará. At the end of the cycle, Saúde e Alegria needed to show funders everything that had been done and, at the same time, tell this story to a broad audience on social media. The activities were spread across three territories, reachable by boat and dirt road, and the subject was hard to explain in a few minutes: the sociobioeconomy.

Before the trip, we worked with the Saúde e Alegria team on a counter-brief (our written reading of the client's brief), a map of the communities and a set of questions for each place. The underlying question was the same everywhere: what has changed in the lives of the people who live there.

In the field, we traveled the Tapajós and Arapiuns rivers. We filmed solar-powered water pumping systems, tree nurseries, agroforestry systems, the Urucureá Artisans' House, the Uka Suri guesthouse in the Vista Alegre do Capixauã village, and the Santarém Ecocenter, where the honey from stingless bees arrives. The people tell the story: association presidents, cooperative members, artisans, the village chief and the program's technical staff.

In the edit, the story begins with water, because that is where everything started, and then opens into three fronts: restoration and forest products, stingless beekeeping and community tourism. The same material produced the short documentary, the short video for social media and the film about honey.

The short documentary presents the program to funders, and the short videos take the same story to Saúde e Alegria's social media. The premiere for the team and partners was the clearest sign that the film did its job.