I always say that NOIA was a school for me, it was my first production course. We didn't know how to do it, but we had the drive and desire to create an exhibition space that many students like us lacked. That's how we committed to carrying out the NOIA first, and we went after finding out how to do it.

I always say that NOIA was a school. Our inexperience was, at the same time, a strength and a risk. Learning by doing is wonderful, but the learning that results from our mistakes is difficult to deal with. I remember several sensations in the first years of NOIA: excitement, desire, insecurities, joy, doubts, strength in partnerships, conflicts of interests, building friendships, the feeling that I was discovering what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And that's exactly what happened to me. Today I am a Cinema worker born and raised behind the scenes at this Festival.

when

me tournaments

producer

The NOIA Festival appeared in the corridors and rooms of the Humanities Center of the Federal University of Ceará, in 2002. There were still no university Cinema courses in the State, which meant that Communication courses, among others, brought together people interested in working with Audiovisual and all its possibilities. That was our case.

We were a group made up of 4 students - Angélica Emília, Ione Lindelauf, Júnior Ratts and myself, and we decided to make a film with the few resources and equipment that the public University had at that time. We dedicated ourselves a lot to this film and when we signed up for Cine Ceará that year, we were not selected for the main show. This frustrates us and makes us think about the spaces for disseminating university audiovisual production, in Ceará and Brazil. So we started contact with the few Brazilian festivals of this nature that existed at the time and created NOIA.



I always say that NOIA was a school for me, it was my first production course. We didn't know how to do it, but we had the drive and desire to create an exhibition space that many students like us lacked. That's how we committed to carrying out the NOIA first, and we went after finding out how to do it.

Our inexperience was, at the same time, a strength and a risk. Learning by doing is wonderful, but the learning that results from our mistakes is difficult to deal with. I remember several sensations in the first years of NOIA: excitement, desire, insecurities, joy, doubts, strength in partnerships, conflicts of interests, building friendships, the feeling that I was discovering what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And that's exactly what happened to me. Today I am a Cinema worker born and raised behind the scenes at this Festival.

I chose the symbol “Ananse Ntontan”, which is like a spider web and represents creativity and wisdom. It is inspired by the folkloric figure Ananse, the clever spider who teaches life lessons. A spider may be found on the windowsill, and days later it may have filled the entire empty space with an intricate web. Then, it moves to any point, rests, moves again and becomes the owner of the space. No other entity can do the same. She is the owner of space and the many paths of the web.

Over time, the set of symbols underwent changes in relation to their uses, in addition to the emergence of new figures and spread throughout the world. In this sense, it also began to be used in less formal contexts, such as everyday clothes, jewelry, walls, objects, and arrived in Brazil also appearing in these contexts. What we find most easily is the Adinkra called Sankofa, usually on gates, fences, prints and tattoos. This Adinkra symbolizes a bird that looks back, and means something similar to “go back and get it” or “go back for it”, teaching us the value of learning from the past to build the present and the future.

This history and symbolism inspired the company’s name and brand. My research into African history and philosophy continues.