[CinCVS] cinelerra in Brasil; thanks to developers

[Leo germani]

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone helping the development and maintenance of cinelerra!

I would like to share with you all what we are doing here in Brasil and how cinelerra is helping us.

I work for the Brazilian Ministry of Culture's project called Culture HotSpots (Pontos de Cultura).
One of the projects objectives is to create a network of cultural production and exchange. Our work is guided by the concepts of free culture and intellectual generosity. All of these HotSpots are being introduced to a new way of producing (collaboratively) and distributing (freely, without intermediaries) their works.

Each Hotspot will have access to a multimedia kit composed by a computer for audio and video recording and editing, one video camera, microphones, etc. Our aim is to promote the interaction of the hotspots on the World Wide Web thru all possible languages, not just plain text (the use of text only is a common thing on the Brazilian communitarian internet access centers.)

The choice of software running on those kits couldn't be different. We chose free, open source software. We adopted cinelerra as the main tool for video editing and already released the first version of a Portuguese translation. Thanks to all that helped.

We are currently working on a portal in Portuguese with reference material for multimedia production using free software,
That is http://estudiolivre.org .

Last year we finished one series of Free Knowledge Gatherings  
Promoted throughout all regions of Brasil. There were 16 gatherings, with an attendance ranging from 50 to 100 people who spent several days together sharing experiences and having hands-on practice with free multimedia production tools.

Many people never had contact with a camera; others already produce their own videos using pirated versions of proprietary
Software. More than teaching the uses of a new tool, we try to teach the plenitude of free software philosophy, to promote the change of behavior from a consumer perspective to the one of a community member.

This process is made easy by the way we organize the gatherings, in one participative and horizontal manner.

Many of the productions made at the Free Knowledge Gatherings
Can be found at www.estudiolivre.org/videos

Because of your role in the process of allowing the total apropriation of technology by the people, and promoting freedom of _expression_, I thank you all for your work.

At last I would like to say that we support the importance of making everyone understand, and more importantly the government, that free software is not for free. We are trying to raise funds for free software development, and when we manage to do it, you will be the first ones to know.

Thanks a lot,

Leo Germani - in the name of estudiolivre.org team
www.estudiolivre.org

ps - if you want to publish this letter somewhere else, please do it, and  then let me know