O fim da fila

Initiatives to promote reading skills are successful if the reading material provided touches on and follows on from the lives of the children and youths involved, takes up the ideas in their heads and enriches them. That is why Baobab Books develops innovative approaches to bringing literature to life for children and youngsters. In the framework of an intercultural and interdisciplinary project children can spend a week under the guidance of experts elaborating their own interpretation of a story and realising it as a stage play.

In his book «O fim da fila» the Brazilian illustrator Marcelo Pimentel places centre stage the figure of Curupira, that mythical being that has protected the trees and animals in the Brazilian jungle since time immemorial.
The story focuses on nothing less than the big picture: night follows day, after the sun come the rains, conflict is followed by reconciliation. Everything in life is part of the big cycle of life - and in the midst of it all there is Curupira with his pot of red paint.

The award-winning book has a few peculiarities. The most striking one is that there is no written text. The story develops exclusively through pictures and every time becomes a new and different story through the eye of the beholder. In its German edition it has been published by Baobab Books under the title Eine Geschichte ohne Ende (A story without end).

Marcelo Pimentel has created a literary stage with his paintbrush. 2018 for the second time, children from a primary school in Basel went on stage. During one week they created their own interpretation of the story by creating sound, rhythm and movement. A public performance was held in the Museum der Kulturen on the evening of the last day of the project week.

The project took place in the week from the 19th to the 23rd of November 2018.

Participants
Project Manager: Sonja Matheson, Internship: Xenia Jehli / Baobab Books
Choreography and Percussion: Norbert Steinwarz, Alex Wäber, Olivier Membrez / Pumpernickel Company
Educational Workshop and Art Work: Alexander Brust, Regina Mathez, Natalia Hernanz Garcia / Museum der Kulturen Basel
Class 3b of Jasna Ripli, Thomas Platter-Schulhaus, Basel
Documentation: Ketty Bertossi (photography), Oren Kirschenbaum (documentation)

The project is made possible thanks to the financial support by
GGG Basel
Sulger-Stiftung  

A Baobab Books project in collaboration with the Pumpernickel Company and Basel's Museum der Kulturen.