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Biography

My name is Hugo Santarem Rodrigues, and my work brings together investigations into long-term structures and connected histories with the production of humanist visual narratives.

In 2004, I began an independent research project on contemporary slave labor that resulted in the feature film Pureza. This research began when I moved to Maranhão and started traveling through its interior. I met people and learned their stories, connected with them, and came to understand firsthand how social structures shape and affect our lives, especially when I lost someone very close to me as a result of the violence in the region. That experience profoundly shaped the course of my life.

The film was only released in 2022, but my authorial research and the purpose behind it were not fulfilled by the film alone: my original idea was to understand which structures kept some people trapped within a violent and outdated system while another part of the population benefited from that very same system. My desire to tell her story was a way, through art and investigation, to contribute to helping other people be rescued from this unjust structure, just as Pureza had done when she set out in search of her own son.

Throughout this process, I gradually came to understand how elites selected parts of the past and produced historiographical frameworks that contributed to preserving their positions of prestige, while at the same time appropriating legitimate causes for their own benefit. Living through these realities caused me profound anguish and depression.

My point of view is rooted in my personal history. My parents are from the countryside of Bahia, where they began working in childhood and were also involved in adult literacy. They migrated to Brasília and devoted their professional lives to social assistance. My father, a Black man born on November 20, Black Consciousness Day in Brazil, carried that pride with him. This environment, together with my own experiences, allowed me to connect empirical experience with my artistic and academic research.

For 20 years, I worked in communication and the arts, during which I had the privilege of receiving awards and other forms of recognition both locally and internationally. I graduated in Advertising from IESB in Brasília, completed postgraduate studies in Visual Arts at Senac in Brasília, studied photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and studied cinema at AIC in São Paulo and at Roteiraria.

Despite my academic and professional background and the recognition I had received, I still felt far from fulfilling the purpose that had guided my research since the beginning of the journey that gave rise to Pureza in 2004.

The return to that purpose took shape through Project Interior in 2014, which focused on investigating my own ancestry. Through a DNA test, I sought parallels between my lineage and the formation of Brazil. The role of migratory movements in the construction of Brazilian culture then became the central axis of my methodology.

During the pandemic, I returned to this path with greater intensity, one that I consider consistent with my purpose.

After conducting empirical research in Brazil and Africa, I expanded the field of investigation to the former Portuguese colonial territories and their connections to colonial Brazil.

It was along this path that I recovered connections and historiographical frameworks from which I formulated the concepts I named Indo-Brazilianness and The Myth of Immigration, developed as interpretive categories and critical methods of socio-historical reading and later incorporated into my academic research.

At the beginning of 2026, at the age of 43, I began my Master’s degree in Brazilian Studies at the University of Lisbon, in Portugal. My thesis systematizes and further develops the research trajectory that gave rise to Pureza and, subsequently, to the formulations of The Myth of Immigration and Indo-Brazilianness.

I have always lived with dimensions that often seemed to be in conflict: on one side, a search for art, creation, and an optimistic view of the world; on the other, an intense need to understand facts, structures, and patterns, accompanied by periods of hyperfocus on investigation and research. One side called for adventure; the other, for routine. The tension between these needs, combined with the intensity with which I sought to understand reality, often caused me profound distress and depression that had accompanied me since childhood. My tendency to search for patterns, establish creative connections, and question my own biases came to be understood from a new perspective following my late diagnosis, at the age of 44, of ADHD and ASD. The diagnosis helped me understand the way I investigate, create, and relate to the world, while also reinforcing a principle that guides my research: new information in the present can broaden our understanding of the past.

Academic Background:

M.A. Candidate in Brazilian Studies – University of Lisbon (ULisboa)
Postgraduate Degree in Visual Arts – Senac (Brasília, Brazil)
Studio/Advertising Photography and Lighting for the Magazine Photographer – School of Visual Arts (New York, USA)
Cinematography for Film – International Academy of Cinema (AIC São Paulo, Brazil)
Screenwriting and Series Bible: from Creation to Sale – Roteiraria (São Paulo, Brazil)
Branded Entertainment & Content Bootcamp – Miami Ad School (Brazil)
B.A. in Social Communication – IESB (Brasília, Brazil)