Claun (Part 1: Ayana's Week of Adventures)

The mysterious world of masked clowns in Rio de Janeiro forms the basis for this pilot episode of Bragança’s multimedia project that he wants to develop further. Dream and reality mingle smoothly in Part 1: Ayana`s Week of Adventures. Ayana’s father, a gang leader in the suburbs of Rio, is murdered during a carnival evening. The 13-year-old girl, looking for the culprits, soon finds herself in the strange, chaotic and dangerous world of the ‘bate-bolas’: masked clowns that traditionally populate the streets during carnival. With this imaginative fable, Bragança does justice to the history of this frightening yet artistic clown figure from his country. The maker is planning to augment his Claun project with six 'webisodes' in which Ayana grows to adulthood among the clowns, a graphic novel and a site filled with documentation and interviews about the origins of masked carnival clowns in Brazil - and their existence today.