Voyage by Daniela Thomas

Voyage is about a young man that wakes up, startled, in the bunk bed of a tiny bedroom. We hear clicking sounds, as he fiddles with something off-screen. Carrying a long black case under his arm, he climbs down the narrow corridors and stairways of a favela. Eyes follow him at every turn, focused on the black case. Standing in a crowded bus that crosses the endless sea of favelas on the outskirts of Rio, he makes people uncomfortable with the case. Next, he is on a train, eyes lost in the distance. Later in his long journey, he is on another bus in a richer part of town. As he finally gets a seat, clutching his black case, he makes the girl next to him very anxious. Time passes, and he falls asleep alone in his seat. The sound of a police officer’s siren wakes him up. He opens the black case. Inside we see the shiny keys of a clarinet. Fingers move over the keys, as we hear Melodia Sentimental by Hector Villa-Lobos. Slowly the image reveals that the young man playing the clarinet is our traveller and that we are in a stately room where a young orchestra plays the beautiful Villa-Lobos piece. A segment of Stories on Human Rights 2009 produced by ART for The World commissioned by the High Commissioner of Human Rights with award-winning filmmakers and artists, using the universal language of art to sensitize people across the planet to what “human rights” actually means.