BLOG SYNOPSIS

A Dutch family left Holland to transform a four-hundred-year-old Portuguese monastery into a home, artists’ workshop, and nature preserve.  Convento bends the rigid structure of conventional documentary filmmaking, blurring the line between information and art.  The audience will be transported to a real place and meet very real people, but through a more adventurous, surreal experience. 

A Dutch family left Holland to transform a four-hundred-year-old Portuguese monastery into a home, artists’ workshop, and nature preserve.  Convento is indeed informative, but where conventional documentaries are confined to a familiar structure, its surreal storytelling style opens the monastery doors through which the audience is invited to learn.  Convento is the union of information and art. 

A Dutch family left Holland to transform a four-hundred-year-old Portuguese monastery, beginning its second mythology.  Convento is an artistic and surreal documenting of these extraordinary people and the world in which they live.  Conventional documentary filmmaking structure is dissolved and then reconstituted into an innovative and informative experience.  Its purpose is exploration.  Its vehicle is art.   

A Dutch family left Holland to transform a four-hundred-year-old Portuguese monastery into a home, artists’ workshop, and nature preserve.  Convento is by definition a documentary, but rather than a slideshow tour punctuated with rigid soundstage interviews, the world of its subjects is introduced through visually interactive storytelling.  The confines of conventional documentaries are made malleable with art.