ABOUT MAAT PRODUÇÕES
Maat Produções is an audiovisual production company based in Recife. It was founded by Pernambuco director Danielle Valentim in 2014 and since then has been developing original projects based on the search for a new artistic language that values the definition of black female poetics.
History, motivation, what it does, how it does it
Maat Produções has established itself as a specialized company, meaning that most of its projects, produced during the pandemic, either focus on audiovisual content or on identity-based content.
In 2021, Danielle Valentim began studying African philosophies and, through courses taught by Professor Katiúscia Ribeiro, immersed herself in the concept of Maat brought by the mythology of Kemet, which emerged in Ancient Egypt.
Maat is a Kemetic deity responsible for establishing truth, harmony, righteousness, justice, order, and reciprocity in the universe.
According to Kemet mythology, it is before Maat, at the moment of our death, that we are questioned about our righteousness. The feather is the measure that weighs our heart in this court of the goddess. By placing the heart on one side and the feather on the other, Maat assesses whether our actions throughout our lives have made our heart as light as a feather.
Moved by Maat's precepts of righteousness, justice, and truth, together with a call to sharing proposed by ancestral wisdom, Danielle Valentim decided to found Maat Produções and thus contribute to greater diversity on screen and behind the scenes, since for each audiovisual content project produced, there is a choice for directors, screenwriters, producers, and actors who are mostly women, people with disabilities, or self-declared black, brown, and indigenous people; people who, before affirmative action laws, had little representation in leadership positions in Brazilian audiovisual media.
Based on the precept of African philosophy that understands Ancestry as the way we recognize ourselves and others in the world, we have created a company that celebrates the arrival of each member of our project teams, who add to and contribute to the artistic endeavor, which is as collective as it is audiovisual. And when we see our achievements on screen, we honor those who came before us and celebrate the representation of black people in audiovisual content.
Our first project, a series of interprograms in documentary format called Pretas da História (Black Women in History), emerges as a proposal to take another look at black women, creating and retelling the stories of these women, and thus bringing new forms of representation of black female subjectivities.
The range of women overlooked by historiography is so broad that the desire to be a spokesperson for our ancestors pulses intensely in our hearts. And so, guided by the precepts of African philosophy, where reason and emotion go hand in hand, we created another series that highlights the black female personalities who made, and still make, history: the series História de Preta (Black Women's History).
We continue our research, sharing with those who feel touched by our work, creating stories that populate the Brazilian collective imagination, because we believe in audiovisual media as an instrument of healing, but also of sharing and celebration.
“No one is so wise that they do not need to be an eternal learner” Mãe Stella de Oxóssi
