Oscar Niemeyer was known for his distinguished humanity, for his genuine modesty coupled with a great kindness. Someone touching and authentic, reputed to be accessible when those he worked with or whom he met interested him. But in other circumstances, the gentle man could turn leery, as someone who would not let himself be fooled, and could prove to be as closed and chilling than friendly and generous. A man enamoured of simplicity in his human relations through his ethical and political commitments, yet undoubtedly a star, with everything that this implies in the difficulty of making contacts and in the approach attempts carried out by people who were foreign to him. However, the fate made that in the end, thanks to Ana Cristina’s obstinacy and the diligence of Fernando Lemos, the barriers and obstacles (and not small ones) could finally be lifted, after a time which was consequent, nothing having happened easily. In retrospect, I reckon that Niemeyer's final agreement weighed as a determining factor on the hypothetical future of this project, because it clearly legitimized its potential. Moreover, Oscar Niemeyer's go-ahead symbolically magnified each of my dreams and more globally this passion for Brasilia that I had nurtured my project with, and everything I had tried to express through it. At the time, this represented a great encouragement to me.

This is how were born the essential foundation that the production of Brasilia. Voyage to Dawn requested : Oscar Niemeyer’s memories, collected in front of the camera. Ana Cristina organized the shoot’s executive production. We all gathered in Rio in early January 2004, for the filming’s preparations and scoutings at Oscar Niemeyer's studio in Avenida Atlantica.
In parallel, we took the opportunity to film the superb Canoas Villa, on the heights of Rio, one of Niemeyer's first realizations which he designed for his own place to live, and that he did not leave until after that a landslide in the 1960s affected his family. He then decided to get back to Rio’s gorgeous beaches of Ipanema, and then Copacabana’s where he settled his workshop.