Today we’d like to introduce you to Marcio Freitas.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
When I think back on some of the events that brought me to this point, it’s easy to think about all the great stories of some kind of relative success and the results that made it “all worth it” but if I’m being honest with my self, what really shaped me into choosing my field of work from all the option layed in front of me, was the fact that I was the tallest kid in my class.
I remember kids in school trying to bully me from a very young age and that made me very introspective until my teenage years. Somehow feeling discriminated gave me this need to understand others and connect to people. Instead of making me isolated and hateful, it made me value people’s best qualities and be thankful for their time in my life.
I was 15 when my mom and I moved from Brazil to a small city 3 hours away from the capital of Chile. There wasn’t much to after school so I started drawing and it became very clear to me that expressing my self through art would always be my passion.
The next 24 years I spent learning and expressing my self through any kind of tool I could find but I think photography became the first tool to empower me to really help others. In 2004 I created a photo campaign to promote donations for the Cancer therapy hospital in my city. It was the first time I understood that art didn’t have to be used just to express my feeling but it could be much more than that.
In 2016 I created a series of photographs, with hundreds of extraordinary women, that express what they felt about harassment, abuse and rape. Some of them went through very traumatic events but they wanted to be there for other women in the same situation so together we made a photo exhibition to help women all over Brazil. We made over 70 exhibition so far and it’s still being exhibited in museums.
Right now, I’m directing a documentary about rape culture during Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro and a new photography exhibition that focuses on healing invisible wounds.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I like to think that every phase of my life, I had a different obstacle to overcome. In school, it was dyslexia that made my learning process very hard but pushed me into finding creative ways to deal with that like recording my voice reading books and listening to it many times to assimilate the information.
I was very shy growing up and the idea of talking to people scared me senseless. To become a photographer and director, the most difficult thing was to force myself into not thinking how scared I was to talk to others. If you pretend for a long time that you are not shy, one day you understand that you can be confident by making actions instead of overthinking. It is easier said than done but thinking like that helped me in my journey.
Moving to LA was hard, felt lonely and took me a long time to create a group of people that we cared about each other but I learned from dyslexia that we have to find creative ways to deal with problems and overcoming my awkwardness to engage in conversations with people I don’t know was much easier by my experience of not overthinking gained when I became a photographer/director.
I feel that struggles prepare us for things that will eventually block our way so we can solve them when the time comes.
Please tell us about 9K FILMS.
I feel that every single work I produced since I started working as a Director and Photographer was very personal.
I had the chance to work with brands like Coca-Cola and L’Oreal, direct music videos for artists like Major Lazer and create international exhibitions reported by CNN and The New York Times, but I always felt like an artisan sculpting something organic that needed to be personal.
I know that the one thing I could always bring that is unique to my work is the love I put into everything I create.
You may love many people in your life but you never love the same way and it’s always personal to you. I love all
the works I was blessed to be chosen to do and they all have a unique story and relevance in my life.
I’m very proud of finding very early in life something that takes a lifetime to others, my passion.
It can be excruciating at times but I am married to the only profession I truly ever loved and intend to keep doing it as long as I can.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would’ve listened to my instinct instead of overthinking.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.marcio9k.com
- Email: contact@marcio9k.com
- Instagram: @marcio9k
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marushio
Image Credit:
Picture of the “I Will Never Be Silent” exhibition taken by AP (https://www.ap.org/en-us/)
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