We at CLS are delighted to finally present a personal letter from João Azevo, the co-creator behind the scenes of our Sustainability Initiative videos.
I was born and raised in Portugal, yet I prefer to think about myself as a citizen of the world. I guess my parents are the ones to blame for my eagerness to get to know the world (and for how I look at it, in general).
Traveling the whole world had always seemed to be my mother’s (who was a bank officer) real drive in life. When I was growing up, we used to travel a lot, especially throughout Europe, and it definitely sharpened my curiosity. I’m under the impression that, in her view, visiting Italy by car was far more important to a 10-year-old kid’s upbringing than any attempt of pushing him towards some ordinary direction.
My father, a teacher, and entrepreneur who grew up in Mozambique, soon understood that his major goal in life was to have his own business. Since he had always been good at sports he decided to become a sports teacher so that he could have something to come back to and that is still a kind of parable to me. I think that, if you need to build yourself a backup plan it can only mean that you are willing to go the long way and be ready to fail. And that is a beautiful thing. His life tales also taught me that education is the first step into complete freedom.
On one hand, I had always wondered what it would be like to have, like my father, the opportunity to travel for work- getting to know new places and being able to create partnerships with people from completely different backgrounds and cultures than mine. On the other hand, my relationship with cameras had always been quite instinctive hence I had equally pictured myself working on a movie or TV set. I remember being fascinated by all of that, thinking about how movies come to life, questioning the process…
And so it began, I looked into putting together my passion for travelling and images with the freedom that naturally comes along with working as a freelancer and soon realized it was truly a match made in heaven. After studying design, video and cinematography in Lisbon, photography in Porto and stopping in London for a bit, I went to Cuba to study Film & Tvnproduction. Later, I had the chance to work in projects in Brazil, Portugal, Cape Verde, and Indonesia, among others.
I have been working as a freelance filmmaker, videographer and photographer for more than 10 years now, directing and producing fashion, music, events, traveling, corporate and lifestyle videos and photoshoots.
Lately, I have been working mainly with CLS, fashion brands and artists. Moren recently, I´ve been in charge of the audiovisual production for a Fado artist, meaning all the video and photography content- from the creative conception to production, shooting and post-production. I can either produce and release simple ‘how to’ videos or deliver to my clients the whole video and photography services, starting from the original idea and the creative process, to the production and execution until the definitive pieces.
I came across CLS when a friend of mine, who works at Volvo Sweden, sent me the Linkedin job post for a videographer. Our partnership has been going on for a couple of months now and I couldn’t be happier with the work we have been accomplishing together.
When I first got in touch with Roya Moghaddas, CLS’s secretary-general, the connection was immediate as we realized we spoke the same language. We have been developing video concepts for CLS- with so much more to come until the end of the year.
It’s been an amazing ride and I can’t wait to finally visit Sweden so I can truly connect with Swedish culture and get to know all those wonderful places I have been told about.
Obrigado
João Azevo
