Starting Tuesday, May 31, Brazil’s Rede Record is traveling back in time to discover the origins of a great story. The story of Escrava Mãe (Slave Mother), the channel’s upcoming telenovela, precedes its popular Escrava Isaura (Isaura the Slave Girl), which first aired in 2004.
Written by Gustavo Reiz and directed by Ivan Zettel, Escrava Mãe airs at 7:30 p.m. weeknights starting Tuesday night.
Rede Record — considered Brazil’s second-largest producer of original content with a total of more than 90 hours per week — offers programming focused on the Brazilian family. Between 1993 and 2015, Rede Record’s audience has increased by 357% in São Paulo, according to Kantar Ibope.
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This telenovela tells the story of the ancestors of Isaura, the protagonist of the 2004’s successful telenovela. That novela narrated how Isaura’s family was originally captured in Africa and sent to Brazil. Isaura’s grandmother gave birth to Juliana, the character played by Gabriela Moreyra in Escrava Mãe. Juliana and Miguel, played by Pedro Carvalho, become Isaura’s parents.
Alexandre Barbosa Machado de Souza, on-air creative promos coordinator, says “all of the promotion for Escrava Mãe is based on the success of the first telenovela, Escrava Isaura. That success is why this new story was born. The objective of all the pieces is to relate the telenovela’s plot and explain to viewers how it all started. We also created the cast promos, in which the actors of the telenovelas are introduced with their respective characters. These pieces tend to have a lot of information and take longer to produce,” says Souza.
For the pre-release of Escrava Mãe, “we defined four concepts that summarize the plot’s main points,” continues Souza. These concepts are showcased in the four spots titled Chamada Escrava Mãe, África, Navio and Parto.
The main one, Chamada Escrava Mãe, which runs nearly a minute and a half, summarizes some of the novela’s key content, in which a voiceover says “the daughter of pain,” Juliana, Isaura’s mother, “becomes the mother of hope.”
The same message, namely that pain is transmutable, is also part of the other creative pieces: three shorter teasers that explain the story’s three central conflicts.
África depicts the lives of Isaura’s ancestors in their hometown, where they once lived in freedom. Aerial shots invite viewers to look at the story in the past and in the distance. The promo voiceover intones: “they can enslave my people, but my soul will remain free.”
Navio (Ship) adds to this idea of salvation, saying that “in spite of suffering, there has always been strength to dream.”
The same type of aerial shot shows natives who have already been forced into slavery preparing to be taken overseas.The overhead shots offer viewers an overall perspective: what happened is inalterable.
Finally, in Parto (Childbirth), the phrase “there are stories that go through time” turns Juliana’s delivery into the first frame for one Brazil’s most famous stories: Isaura’s life.
Both Escrava Isaura and Escrava Mãe are stories founded in slavery, and Rede Record expresses that in the graphics created for these spots. Symbols such as chains and fire appear both in the logos of the telenovelas and in the opening titles, in the case of Escrava Isaura, and in the credits of the pre-release pieces, in the case of Escrava Mãe.
Nevertheless, Julio Cesar Balasso, creative director responsible for the opening titles, says both novelas’ main titles stand on their own: “There was no intention to show similarities between both telenovelas. In the opening credits of Escrava Isaura, one can observe a simple edition with Debret illustrations and 3D signatures.”
In Escrava Mãe’s logo, the chains take another role, embracing the title and “pretending to form the shape of a pregnant slave,” he continues, as below.
![](http://brief.promaxbda.org/images/icons/escrava-mae-3-en.jpg)
What Rede Record hopes Escrava Mãe gives birth to is another successful series for viewers to enjoy.
To read this story in Spanish, click here.
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