5 minutes, a whole story, same impact.

Introduction:

“Ilha das Flores”; “Medea”; people have never heard of these movies. However, they all know movies like “Titanic” and “An Inconvenient True”. Even though the four of these films are pretty well made and the stories are very original media emphasize only the long-feature films once it’s the ones that bring money to cinema industry as it’s available to people to see it in the movies theaters. It’s a shame that media forget to pay attention to short-feature films. In other words, short-feature films are getting more popular because of its dissemination by reality shows, the creation of Anima Mondi’s festival and the possibility of winning an Oscar.

 

1st paragraph:

 

First, short-feature films producers found a way to improve its advertising by the creation of a reality show. In this reality show 30 aspirant candidates to movie directors competes for a contract with DreamWorks Company to start their career in cinema industry. The contestants spend a month writing, shooting, editing and directing a short-feature film per week and 3 judges analyze and eliminate the worse of the week. For instance, in the first 2 weeks the rating was pretty low. Yet, people gave the show a chance and started to watch it as they found it brilliant. Due to the approval from public the show’s format ended up being a success. Further, companies as Back of America got interested in the show as well becoming one of the sponsors of the program with high donations.

(about the title… it’s awful, right? lol )

Bandeirantes, a dungeons school

Living in the dungeons in a school environment? Bandeirantes is it. Colégio Bandeirantes, one of the most tradicional schools of São Paulo is about to establish a new tradition: have the largest percentage of students developing diseases such as depression that, in a bit less than half percent of the cases, make people end up commiting suicide. A study made in 2006 envolving all the private schools of the country reveals that 81% of high school students at Bandeirantes started to show agressive behavior very often so as many of them, unhappy with life in general, began to hurt themselves in order to make their inner pain disappear for a moment. In addiction, it was not a coincidence that many of those who started to have bad reactions due to Bandeirantes were the ones forced to study there. Therefore, parents who obligate their children to study in Bandeirantes are only taking the risk of making their children develop mental, social and physical diseases that could affect their life. 

One of the disadvantages of studying forced at Bandeirantes is the possibility of developing mental diseases due to the pressure people are exposed to in there. When spending at least 6 hours per day in a dungeons environment at a school where the pressure to get acceptable grades is the biggest ever seen, many students begin to feel frustrated with themselves. They get tormented with the assumption of failing; their self-esteem gets extremely reduced as they stop believing in their capacity as a whole. For instance, Giovanna Costa flunked her first year studying at Bandeirantes. Even though she did not want to leave her old school she went to Bandeirantes with an inner promise that she would give her best in studies. She strove to study the entire first semester. All the effort she was making seemed not to be enough for her to pass, though. She lost her confidence in herself, giving up in the middle of the path. All her motivation was gone along with her willing to live. She cried a lot in the final semester; she cursed herself craving for a strong medicine that could kill her when consumed in high doses. Depression it was. She is still in treatment nowadays going to a psychiatrist twice a week in an attempt to put an end in her trauma. Therefore, if she hadn’t been obligated to study at Bandeirantes she would have had truly motivation to study in a place where she was happy and would have ever let herself fall down that much.

When it DOES happen to you

(Rick, I guess I wrote too much… I really need to work on it)

 

All the reasonable thoughts, all the inner strength, all the words and thoughts of support; it’s just entirely different when it happens to you.

 

 Considering that my father left home for good when I wasn’t even born (taking all the money with him and leaving my mom and I with only the small apartment we had) and that for ever since we scarcely have news about him I was raised by my grandparents once my mother had to work hard to be able to provide us a truly home.

Because of that, I always had, in my grandpa, also the best father ever (the one I’ve never had). He was the first one who saw my first steps; my first milk tooth beginning to grow; he was patient enough to teach me how to tie my shoes; if I wanted to, he would play with me flat-out, until I get tired and fall asleep; he was the male image of a hero to me.  I don’t even have to say that I love him above everything and everyone else and the relation we have is the strongest. Due to that, now that I’m grown, it’s my turn to take care of him in anyway he comes to need. It never passed through my mind that it would come a day when things would get in a way that I wouldn’t be able to do a thing to help him.

It was a warm afternoon of 2006, my mother and I went to my grandparents’ house to watch what would be the last game Brazil played in 2006 World Cup. When the game was over, my grandpa couldn’t believe Brazil had lost. He was visibly upset and angry so he went to his bedroom to finish the painting he was doing so as not to keep thinking of that. Once I hate sports – especially soccer – I went to the computer.

Suddenly I noticed an agitation in the corridor; my mother was running back and forward asking for my grandma. I felt she wasn’t thinking straight because she was shaking her head in sign of rejection; she was disheveling her hair in an attempt to send that sensation away along with those thoughts; she was calling for my grandma in a tearful and desperate way. I had never seen my mother acting like that before. At my eyes, she was always the most “good sense” one in the family, who would manage any situation with balance. I was scared. My heart was beating so fast that I could feel it’s pulsation in my chest. My hands started to tremble and a cold sweat took over my body. I wanted to go out of the office room (where the computer was) to see what was going on but, in the other hand, I was too fearful to do anything. And I wouldn’t be able to leave the room anyway because I felt like I was attached to the ground; my legs were too weak to sustain myself.

So I started to sing a song to focus my attention in anything else and I kept repeating the song even louder when my mother started to talk to my grandma. It didn’t work out very well so I heard part of the talk. Actually, right at that time, I didn’t know exactly what it was but I heard her saying something about my grandpa health. For a moment, I stopped listening to the conversation. I looked around at my grandpa’s office and my eyes paused in the pictures at the wall; there were at least 10 photos and they were all of my grandpa with me in different ages. I felt butterflies in my stomach and at the same time I was felling kind of nauseated.

So I left the room. My mother and grandma were both in his bedroom so I stood at the doorway. My grandpa was at his bed; helpless, unconscious, fainted. He had had a hemorrhage (derrame). From that moment on to the rest of the night, nothing that I saw was clear. My vision immediately got obfuscated by the tears that would roll down my eyes at any time. I went to the living room and sat at the couch. My mind stopped working, I was in shock. I don’t know for how long I stood there but at some point my mother went to see me. He had woken up. He was back. However, his conscience wasn’t. The hemorrhage made his memory die away. He didn’t remember a thing. He didn’t remember my grandma, my mother, his bedroom, his house. I could hear him screaming in desperation repeating sentences like: “Who are you?” “Where am I?” “This is not my house, this bedroom it’s not mine!” “WHERE AM I?” “WHO ARE YOU?” And suddenly, in the middle of all that questions, I heard: “Where is my angel? Marina! Where is she?”. I was the only thing he remembered. He hadn’t forgotten me. My hero was back, and he knew who I was. I burst into tears, even more than before. I had to help him.

My mother called the ambulance but she was weeping so much that it was pretty impossible to understand the very few words she was able to say. I took the phone and after answering those protocol questions about how exactly he was and what was the house address, the woman sent an ambulance. My mother was lamentable at the floor crying like a baby. My grandpa had just passed through many surgeries because of a cancer and she was afraid that his hemorrhage had something to do with that. So my grandma told me to call a friend to talk to me and make me feel better. I called my best friend who started to say beautiful things to help me stop crying but it wasn’t working out. I hanged up and started looking at the window. I started to sing the same song I was singing earlier (Radios in Heaven) and tried to calm down and stop crying.

            It turned to be impossible when I heard the sound of the ambulance getting closer. Somehow it made the situation more dramatic. The doctors came, the examination happened in my grandpa’s bedroom and there was no precision in the diagnostic. They just said that his memory would come back with time. My grandpa didn’t stop asking to see me. So after the doctors left, I was less scared with the whole situation and enter his room for the first time. The sparkle of his eyes was almost none, his face showed an agony and torment expression that came to a weak smile when we saw me. I hugged him. I realized he was as fragile as precious. My hero was human after all. Even he has bad days. I was with him and that was all that matters. My mother showed me for the first time that it was OK for strong women to cry. My grandma proved how strong she was. After this day, I see everyone of my family in a different and more respectable way. Their behaves is also different now. We all changed. We now know how important we are to each other.

So I guess that’s it: people change, world vision’s change, but the fact remains there. And no matter what, it is something that will never leave my mind. The sound of the ambulance’s siren, my mother’s disbelief appearance, the noise of my grandpa silent cry: that night became one of the most unforgettable moments of my life.