Documentary Pitch #1

After thinking a lot about what gives me and a lot of people I'm close to unique perspectives on life, I thought that the best idea was to record a documentary on my Portuguese American upbringing and how growing up within a deeply celebrated culture gave me something personal and special to me that has followed me my whole life. Everything from the "festas" my family and I used to attend, to the food my grandmother and all her sisters used to cook, to the dances I was forced to learn from a young age, even to the bilingual household I grew up in. I'm lucky enough to have childhood friends who also experienced this here with me at Boise State, so I could interview to see what it's like for a Portuguese kid to grow up in the U.S. and go through the American education system with parents who may or may not have totally understood it. I think I could even make it pretty humorous, as there our culture can be pretty over-the-top at times and there are lots of cultural misunderstandings that could occur between us and our parents.

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 13, 2018 at 8:50 AM

    As I've said elsewhere in the comments on another pitch, I think that documentaries about identity are easily among the most compelling. It will be interesting to see how your piece, about being a part of a culture, compares to the other two I've read, about a loss of that culture.

    I notice you mention food, and I think a key to making this story "pop" is going to be those sensory details. Bring us in with smells, sounds, flavors...make us all wish we were Portuguese.

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  2. UnknownMarch 13, 2018 at 2:40 PM

    I second what John says here! I think the sensory details will be important. What do other students already know (correctly or incorrectly assume) about Portuguese culture here in Boise? I think that the idea of cultural misunderstandings between generations is something that will resonate many listeners. Will you be able to interview your family (and maybe even extended family) over the phone well?

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  3. BballengerMarch 14, 2018 at 9:48 AM

    I think one of the keys is to identify the "trouble" that this story might explore, and that's not clear from the proposal. What are/were some of the interesting challenges of growing up in a Portuguese family? These could be related to identity, of course; this is a common immigrant story in the U.S., and one we can't tell often enough, especially in these times. For example, many of us, especially those closer to our immigrant roots, feel ambivalent about the connection, especially when we're young. We want to be like everybody else! Did you struggle with that? Then there are a clash in cultural perspectives. What were they in your family? Things like these could be the focus of a story. The key is to build it around a problem, question, dilemma.

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