Brazilian filmmaker builds career bridging China and Brazil

A movie about human brain limits

The new project, provisionally called The Creator of Everything, is actively being shot by a team of experienced filmmakers with Moura Barba as the executive producer. 

The new film thrills Moura Barba because she views it as a new frontier in her development as an artist. 

"It will be incredible for us to take part in this. I believe that bringing cinema together with pioneering and successful initiatives of collaboration in the limits of knowledge, applying science in other areas of our society, is essential.

"This was a project I chose very carefully and with great affection to collaborate on. I see enormous potential for it to engage and connect audiences in our countries, around a subject that is both relevant and urgent."

The documentary, co-written and directed by documentarians Rodrigo Teixeira Marques and Tiago Tambelli, tells the story and philosophy of brain-machine capacities as well as Nicolelis' achievements.   

"It is an essayistic film, with the voice-over of Nicolelis, questioning, at a higher level, the human being's capacity to think, realize and create," said Tambelli.

Marques emphasized that the protagonist has more than science essays to share, but a whole understanding on society. 

"It is about the power of the human brain as a creator, as it works to build a society that understands that limits and solution are given by human efforts, not supernatural causes." 

Nicolelis told China Daily the idea came to him 10 years ago. 

"We have been developing this research since when we planned to help a debilitated boy make the first kick at the soccer World Cup of 2014. Rodrigo Marques followed me since then, when we established laboratories in Brazil and other countries."

The film will also document how his partnership with China at the Xuanwu Hospital of Beijing can help his team's achievements leap ahead. 

"We began transferring patients to Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University of Beijing, and we are writing our research to be published in the coming months."  

"It is a fruitful cooperation, with great results, that permitted interactions between Chinese and Brazilian scientists," he continued. "A large number of patients, the possibility to make sophisticated studies on cerebral image, recovery process, many things we could not do in Brazil, with last generation magnetic resonance machines that we didn't have in Brazil. We will have a high impact in the clinic rehabilitation of paraplegic patients."

Moura Barba shares Nicolelis' confidence and decided to document the process. "This project brings together many strengths to connect the two countries and to ensure that we can, in fact, carry out a successful co-production. It addresses the issue of pure science, cutting-edge science, and the question of scientific knowledge that will directly benefit the population."