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Joao Luis de Carvalho Araujo
Joao was a pioneer creating the first cinema film lab in Brazil. He was an award winning producer and photographer. In his later years his work as a
defender of indigenous peoples rights and the rainforest became a new creative focus. Joao facilitated and played a major role in the production of TBS's Amazon Warrior: Paiakan, a documentary by Executive Producer Barbara Pyle. Araujo also helped to implement on the ground floor the Paiakan Legal Defence Fund with Frank Melli, which was funded through the Rainforest Action Network by the Rainforest Alliance, The Barbara Pyle Foundation and other anonimous donors.
Joao was also responsible for getting Irekran and other women artists from the Kayapo village of Aukre, one of the northern villages of the Kayapo reservation in the state of Para, to paint their traditional body paitings on canvas for the first time.
Later, Joao built value in showing the interconnectiveness between the protectors of the Amazon Rainforest and indigenous cultures through promoting a series of events displaying the paintings and other indigenous arts.
He even had some of the Kayapo attend these events and do live body paintings.
Araujo also pioneered many other creative ventures including an idea from an ealier film he was involved with, one of the first long format animated films in Brazil, with the same name: Symphony of the Forest. He forged a collaboration with "Tio" Laercio de Freitas a well know Brazilian maestro and music arranger. Joao had "Tio", as he is affectionately known amongst musicians and friends, do an arrangement of traditional Kayapo songs and set them to some classical music he arranged, (to be released in the near future).
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Over time, Joao took many stunning photos of the Kayapo.
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