FAVELLA RISING
US/Brazil, 2005, 80 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Matt Mochary, Jeff Zimbalist.
Favela Rising is an impressive documentary. It won a number of awards, including wins at Leeds and Tribeca, for the best documentary of 2005.
The film-makers spent several years accumulating footage of the favelas of Rio. This is the area featured in the acclaimed feature film, City of God. City of God took the audience into the slums, the hard lives of the people who lived there, the proliferation of drug trafficking, the danger with guns and violence, haphazard murders, the terrorising of people in the favela. It also focused on the young children, the gangsters as their role models, and the seeming endless cycle of this kind of fate for the young.
Favela Rising also shows some of these features. It focuses on Anderson Sa, who was a drug dealer, but who went out of this way of life, started a grassroots musical movement of Afro Reggae. Over the years, a number of young people joined him to make music. As they travelled round the favelas, they offered a hopeful alternative to a future which was simply linked with drug deals and murders.
The film interviews some of the young people, highlighting their attitudes, showing how it was possible for some to change. Unfortunately, police corruption, the fear of the communities, militated against the development.
There are quite a number of interviews with Anderson Sa himself – indicating that an individual, motivated, can use something like music, hip-hop, drumming and other art forms in order to change people’s lives, to motivate angry young people so that their better selves can emerge.
1.An interesting and appealing documentary? Awards?
2.Audience knowledge of Rio de Janeiro, of the favellas of Brazil? The information available? The slums, life in the slums, the violence? The tradition of films about violence in Argentinian cities: Pixote, City of God?
3.The two directors, the years that they took making the film? Realistic with people, the events, the troubles? Interviews? The music and performances? The narrative? Sa and his accident, recovery?
4.The importance of the music, the songs, the Afro tradition, rap, Brazil and Rio, the groups, the expanding number of groups, their performances? Song, acrobatics? Dance?
5.The picturing of the favella and the poverty, slum life, the violence, the drug lords, the influence on the children, the guns, the murders – and the statistics about children murdered in Brazil? The police and their intervention, non-intervention? The ambition of the boys to be drug-runners? Sa, his growing up in the favella, his image of himself, plans for his life, the family and their worries about him, with the drug lords, his change of heart?
6.The change, opportunities, what brought about the transformation? A sense of mission? His success, the importance of his personality, performances, joining with the founder of the group? Funds, grants from the United States? The children, the number of groups?
7.The picturing of the dangers, the drug lords and their agreement to let the groups perform, the drug lords and their concern about protecting children? The confrontation in the favella, the group deciding to stand its ground, gaining the respect of the drug lords?
8.The consequences of this movement for people, safer neighbourhoods, better way of life? The spread of the groups throughout the different favellas of Rio?
9.A film of inspiration, the accident for Sa, his hospitalisation, the extraordinary aspects of the recovery, returning from hospital, his going back to performance?
10.One person changing the world – the possibilities for change?
