RICARDO D'AGUIAR / SELECTED VIDEO / 2024

Welcome to my selected videos page.

I am a multimedia strategist and creative with international experience in both the commercial and the non-profit sectors. Originally from Rio de Janeiro, I'm currently based in Toronto. Below are a few examples of multimedia projects I have worked on, with a focus on video production.

The Women's Market

This 2024 film highlights the vital role of women in one of Accra's most important markets and their fight for economic autonomy in the face of adversity. It also deepens the understanding of the drivers and dynamics of PPPs, examining how Ghana's journey from a state-centric economic model to embracing collaboration with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund paved the way for the integration of PPPs into its development agenda. Based on the groundbreaking research of Ghanaian feminist scholars Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey and Sylvia Ohene Marfo, "The Women's Market" is part of DAWN's multimedia project, "Old Dog, New Tricks: Neocolonialism & Public-Private Partnerships in the Global South,” which I planned, produced and supervised.

The South Resists

"The South Resists" is a documentary that follows a protest caravan of the indigenous women-led resistance against the megaproject of the interoceanic corridor in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in southern Mexico. This road-movie-style film sheds light on recurring development plans implemented by the Mexican government, resulting in land dispossession, income loss, precarization of labor, migration, and environmental degradation. The caravan is met with intimidation and an escalation of violent repression as it threads its way through small villages and towns in the region to alert and mobilize the population (30 minutes, 2023).

CURANDERO

Deep in the Amazon forest, various regional cultures consider plant species doctors, teachers, and intelligent beings. A sophisticated medicinal practice was developed around these plants and has been used for millennia. Western science is carefully studying its effectiveness today. Curandero takes a closer look at these two powerful systems of knowledge production, which converge and interact to produce something new and of great potential. At a critical point in the climate crisis, Curandero reminds us we can only thrive if the planet's ecosystems also thrive.

FEMINIST CHALLENGES

This film is about DAWN, Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era. DAWN is an organization of feminist researchers, analysts, and activists from the global South who work for gender, economic, and ecological justice, as well as for sustainable and democratic development. Since its founding in 1984, DAWN has been recognized for its feminist analysis of gender and development and its participation in the global women's and feminist movements. Through research, analysis, advocacy, and training from feminist pedagogies, DAWN seeks to support the mobilization of women, lesbians, and trans people to challenge unequal and unfair social, economic, and political relationships and advance the construction of alternatives. I co-produced, directed, shot and edited it (45 minutes, 2019).

Film poster created for the launch of the 23-video series based on the Intergenerational Dialogues meeting held by DAWN in Ciudad de México in 2019.

This documentary is part of a series of 23 videos created during the DAWN Comms overhaul which was based on the DAWN Comms Plan 2020 proposal.

CLIMATE CRISIS

This is part of a series of 7 short videos for social media based on DAWN's thematic areas. The voice-over is from Dr Gita Sen, the renowned Indian feminist economist. I co-produced, directed, shot and edited it.

BRIGHT SKY

This animation is the first of a series of animated and live-action films produced under the project "Old Dog, New Tricks: Neocolonialism & Public-Private Partnerships in the Global South'' that highlights the effects of PPPs on women's lives. The project also focuses on the deterioration of working conditions by promoting casual contracts and different degrees of informal work, in what’s quickly becoming a trend of late-stage capitalism. I was responsible for the production and coordinated international dissemination as the organization's Communications Officer.

PALESTINIAN SUMMER SCHOOL

Documentary about the Drama Summer School, a project that offers a 3-year educational program to teachers from Palestine and the Arab world. The classes take place in a hotel in the ancient city of Jerash, Jordan. It is organized and offered free of charge by the A.M. Qattan Foundation. The idea is to introduce the use of drama as a tool for enhancing the teaching of regular school disciplines. It also creates a space for people to interact freely and straighten networks in a society under severe pressure. This film was broadcast by Palestinian National TV.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Documentary short about social actors ignored in their daily professions: bus drivers, rubbish collectors, maids, nannies, and doormen. People who are judged, frowned upon and excluded in various ways. The film focuses on listening to these people, their stories and especially their opinions about the way they are viewed and treated by society. Contemporary thinkers offer a critical analysis and understanding of this historical legacy of Brazilian slavery in modern urban centres.

AERIAL FOOTAGE REEL

Drone footage shot at the US/Mexico border for a film project about an anthropologist and a botanist working in the region. I enjoy aerial footage creation and have learned to use a few different aircraft.

MUSIC VIDEO FOR A SONG BY KATIE DEY

I am an experimental videomaker and have been working with different approaches to video since I first got a VHS camera in my hands. This is a recent example, using a few image-sampling apps and programming created by the Spanish digital artist (and sea captain!) Julio Lucio.

TAKIWASI: HOUSE OF HEALING

The research & therapy centre Takiwasi is based in the High Amazon region of Peru. Founded in 1986 by French, Peruvian and Japanese doctors, it uses Traditional Amazonian Medicine combined with Western psychotherapy to achieve a high success rate in the treatment of severe drug addiction, depression and other psychological ailments. Patients from around the globe and from the local community seek the centre's services. Takiwasi relies on a multinational staff of Western-trained doctors, psychologists, molecular biologists and ethnobotanists as well as traditional healers from around the region which is notorious for producing some of the greatest curanderos of the Amazon. The centre has developed a unique approach to integrating and articulating Western science and traditional methods to create a therapeutic protocol focused on long-term, sustainable patient results.

FLOATING JUSTICE

Much of the population of Amapá lives in riverside communities accessible only by boat. A federal judge and his court set up a floating tribunal and go up the river to render their services to the people. I participated in the project from the beginning. I helped develop the story and edited several pieces with director Leila Lak. One version of the film was awarded Best Documentary in Portuguese Language at the Portugal International film festival (May 2019, produced by Leila Lak). The film was re-edited and sold in different formats to the BBC, NYT and Channel 4, among other broadcasters.

Watch the full film by clicking the button below

VIDEOART FOR SOCIAL MEDIA
ADVOCACY VIDEOART: COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Feminist Digital Justice and The Feminists for a People's Vaccine Campaign

ADVOCACY VIDEOART: CLIMATE CRISIS
THE FUTURE

Transmedia work for a play by Lucas Paraizo Garcia & Fernanda Bond. Presented at the 1st edition of Microteatro from Madrid in Rio de Janeiro. We used 6 synchronized video projectors to fill an entire room where the audience walked through to watch the play. This video was screened as an introduction to the play. It was projected in 6 adjacent screens of 2x1m, custom-made to fit the screening room.

(Mapping by J. Parente)

CONTENT CREATION FOR DAWN

I was DAWN's Communications Officer from 2019 to 2024. DAWN is a pioneering global South feminist think tank and a high-level advocacy organization with consultative status at the UN’s ECOSOC. I worked with the everyday creation and dissemination of DAWN’s ideas via a variety of media and management of different projects for an array of audiences and stakeholders across the globe. During these years, I planned and implemented the overhaul of the organization’s comms strategy; I envisioned and led the process for the composition and implementation of the Comms Plan 2020, expanding the department from 1 permanent staff to six and from four to approximately twenty associates (depending on the period). I oversaw the creation of over 100 videos and hundreds of comms products, including an international series of 7 animated films and two documentaries (above). I also managed the creation and implementation of a new visual identity for the organization and numerous social media campaigns, complete with audience stratification, targeting, translations, and a film about the organization. My team and I raised DAWN’s social media audience by one order of magnitude. We acquired the following of about 200 targeted persons of interest (high-level donors, UN Agency directors, UN Special Rapporteurs, INGO presidents and directors, international journalists and two spots on Al Jazeera’s Studio B: Unscripted). I led the comms effort behind the Feminists for a People’s Vaccine campaign during the pandemic, designing the campaign strategy, plan, and communications products and hiring a full campaign team.

During this five-year period, DAWN's YouTube channel has featured dozens of productions created under my supervision. You can browse through them by clicking the link below.

VIDEOART & PHOTOGRAPHY

You can find more of my work in videoart, writing and photography on my professional Instagram feed.

Kedarnath, Uttarakhand, India