ar2com

A short and superficial overview on the HISTORY OF FILM in Brazil. As you know I made a critical remark to the Golden Bear for Tropa de Elite. I just would like to suggest some other favela-films which are worth to be watched.

Next monday you get a cast on TV Roc, the broadcasting from Rocinha.

Auf könnt Ihr das Thema Film hier nachlesen.

From the ’Famine Aesthetic’ to the 'Favela-Pop' [ 8:31 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (848)

Topics of the Brazilian film history and films I am refering to:
I tried to find the youtube links – only the newer ones are in English. When I linked the English title than it should be in English.
Cinema Novo
= italian Neo-realism (for example: Roma Città Aperta from Bertolucci)

• ‘Rio 40 Graus‘ /Rio at 40 degrees, 1955/ and ‘Rio Zona Norte’ /Rio Northern Zone, 1957/ from Nelson Pereira dos Santos,
  You may watch the whole film in Portuguese. This here is just the first sequence. The rest you can find on youtube.
• Cinco vezes Favela /five times favela 1962/, a collective film

Gláuber Rocha calls it in 1965 the “aesthetic of famine”.

Cinema Marginal

• ‘Terra em Transe‘ /Gláuber Rocha, Land in Trance 1967/,
  DVD out just in portuguese.
• ‘Macunaíma‘ /1969 by Joaquim Pedro/,
  in Portuguese and French
  The scene with the swimming pool is from the Parque Lage.
• ‘O homem que Virou Suco‘ /The squeezed Man, 1979 by Jaoa Batista de Andrade/

Paulista
(more for TV than for cinema)

• ‘Olhar Electrônico’ /electronic view/ with ‘Garotos do Subúrbio’ /The boys from the suburbs, 1982/
• ‘Solo, the Law of Favela’ (1994),
• ‘Zezé’ – The boy, the pod-lid and the favela’ (1995),
• ‘Geraldo voador’ /Flying Gerald/(1996).

Favela-Pop

• Noticias de Uma guerra Particular /News from a private war, 1998
• Cidade de Deus /City of God 2002 by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund/
• Cidade dos homens /City of Men/ = Telenovela
• Uma Ondo no Ar /FavelaRadio 2003/,
• Favela Rising 2005

In the second part of the Interview with the carioca architect Carlos Luis Toledo, who has his side office in the biggest favela called Rocinha, we are talking about the urban design in this favela. The favelados, the slum indwellers, are participating in the process of the new urbanisation there, since they can look back over a long tradition of making urbanity by their own.

The first part of the interview was posted on the 04fev2008. It gives an overview of the theoretical urbanisation of Rocinha.

The Practical Urbanity in Rocinha [ 15:58 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1673)

It shouldn’t be that way, no?
Sorry, that I changed my program, but this message this morning just made me wonder and I had to make a post on this.

‘Tropa de Elite’ was released in Sept./Oct. 2007 at the ‘Festival do Rio’ where it initiated the discussion on piracy. Pavement vendors had sold DVDs before the official release. Them, too, wanted to get some money out of it. And the hard-sell of this film – which is based novel effects and violence – worked out well too much so these vendors at that managed to sell old violent films as ‘Tropa de Elite II to V’.

In Rio people loved the film as a kid of ‘Cidade de Deus/City of God’ or hated it because of talking of these taboo issues. This was the best publicity for the film.
I’ve seen kids on the street playing, reciting/quoting dialogues from the film, rehearsing scenes of tropa de elite. Didn’t the message hit us bad enough? Haven’t we still not understood the danger of these kind of films?

These films are romanticizing the drug problem in megacities. Violence seems to be the export hit from Rio. I don’t believe in the fact that we need to see that violence in the movies to come to know the problem. This is pure gaping at inhuman conditions and of course making huge profit out of it.

We already know that:
“… in the first nine months of 2006 in Rio de Janeiro police killed 807 people …” and
” … The poorest communities bore the brunt of the tens of thousands of gun-related deaths.”
amnesty international.

“People of a Rio slum fear that the police killing of a drug boss will bring more grief”
guardian from uk.

“Interrogation is quite easy to do:
Beat the slum-dweller; whip him black and blue.
Interrogation is quite easy to end:
Beat the scum criminal; whip him till he’s dead.

Lines sung by BOPE – Portuguese initials of the Special Operations Battalion of Rio de Janeiro’s Military Police – during their daily duties.”
Rede Social

“Between December of 1987 and November 2001, violent death claimed 3,937 Cariocas, or local residents, under 18 years of age. By comparison, during the same period, 467 minors died in and around the West Bank between Jordan and Israel, which is considered a war zone by the international community.”
‘Drug Lords and Young Soldiers‘ by Sam Logan
And this is just a quick research on English sites.

So, is it really true that the Berlin International Film Festival, a German cultural institution, awards it with a Golden Bear?
I still haven’t found anything on their motivation to award this film, but I found it very hard to convince me that this film needs it and that we need this film.

Some background information:
‘Tropa de Elite‘ and ‘BOPE‘ on wikipedia. Have a look at the BOPE’s logo. I don’t believe that a good way to prevent violence.

The trailer in Portuguese: