Projects

The Inside Guide: Exploring Kiwi Success in Brazil

The Inside Guide: Exploring Kiwi Success in Brazil is a documentary series that highlights the opportunities that Brazil offers to New Zealand businesspeople and academics.

Media

Brazil & Aotearoa New Zealand

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The Inside Guide YouTube playlist

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The Inside Guide: Exploring Kiwi Success in Brazil is a five-part documentary about six New Zealanders who have had business or academic success in Brazil. Directed by Brazilian filmmaker David Schurmann, the series features business owners Craig Bell, Kim Moore and Marco Kerkmeester; academics John McNamara and Tom Dwyer; and education, tourism and conservation pioneer Felicity Taylor. The featured New Zealanders describe how they have adapted to the language, culture, lifestyle and way of working in Brazil, what they enjoy about Brazil and what has helped them thrive and settle there.

The Inside Guide: Exploring Kiwi Success in Brazil was supported by the Latin America Centre of Asia–Pacific Excellence. It aims to highlight the huge opportunities and challenges that Brazil offers New Zealanders, and to demonstrate how merging our cultural skills creates outstanding conditions for businesses. The series gives a New Zealand audience the chance to connect more directly with the Brazilian story and encourages them to make links with Brazil.

In 2019, around 200 people attended the series premiere events at the Rialto cinema (Auckland) and Embassy Theatre (Wellington), which included Q and A with David and the featured New Zealanders. While he was in New Zealand, David gave masterclasses to students at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University and the South Seas Film and Television School in Auckland.

David has a strong connection to New Zealand, after his family became the first Brazilian family to circumnavigate the globe on a sailboat and the only Brazilian family to have done it three times. They docked in New Zealand when he was 16 years old, and he ended up staying in New Zealand for six years to study filmmaking and work in television.

Published 02 November 2023