About

Getting in, 1989–2008

My first memory sits between a grape popsicle and the ants, an episode that later became a short story, and the set of Extra-Ser, built in Largo da Alfândega, Florianópolis, in 1989. In 1995, aged 10, I followed the shoot of Ritinha, a short written and directed by my father, Antonio Celso dos Santos, and appeared in it as an extra. Two years later he conceived FAM, which he created with my mother, Denise Naccari.

I joined the festival's team at 16, building its website, and the following year came the online film submission system. My first credit in the catalogue, in 2002, was as web designer, which is how FAM also became an information problem for me. I went off to study information systems, worked in kitchens and read Literature at UFSC. I only took the festival on as my own work at 24.

Deciding, 2009–2020

From 2009 I began choosing films, and later evaluating projects for public funds in Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Uruguay. Those seats showed me how a film comes to exist or stops along the way: who reads, who votes, which criterion weighs.

At FAM, the Santa Catarina showcase, Extra-FAM, now DOC-FAM, and the music video section were born under my coordination, and that is where I argued for a quota for women directors until they predominated in the programme. I took a master's in Literature, presided over sector organisations and taught film for almost ten years.

The question, since 2021

In 2021 I helped create Ecovision, and that is what took me to a PhD in Knowledge Engineering and Management. The question changed scale but it is still the one from literature: who tells this story, with which instruments, and who is it left for.

As president of Cinemateca Catarinense I led Qualifica SC Cine, the largest audiovisual training programme on record in Santa Catarina. We began with a survey answered from 46 cities and shared the places equally across the state's regions, so that access would not depend on where each person lives.

There is also the work that never enters a catalogue or a CV: caring, as a mother and as a daughter. It taught me much of what I know about how things stay standing, and about who keeps them standing. Perhaps that is why I research the work nobody credits.