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If not …
We wouldn’t have any favela.
We wouldn’t have any cultural production from the favela.

It is an ironic shortfilm on cocaine and Rio’s urbanism. You know “she don’t lie, she don’t lie … cocaine” (J.J. Cale in 1975) On wikipedia you get more information on the song ‘cocaine’.

idea and production by dd.r and julakim.
postproduction and music by julakim.
The format is wmv because of 16:9, somehow this was difficult to achieve. So check for yourselfes while watching it. If you encounter problems you can download the media player for mac or flip4mac. Please tell me if this works fine for you, since I think the quality is better with .wmv than with .m4v and even smaller.

Remark from Bolivia:
Bolivia’s new president Evo Morales (a former coca farmer) plans to use government aid to promote the sale of coca products.
“Coca sí, Cocaína no” — yes to coca, no to cocaine — was one of Morales’ campaign slogans.
The coca plant is a basis for living. With his new program he aims to disassociate the plant that provides the substance used to make cocaine from the drug stigma. In the Andes, the coca plant is ‘only’ a medicine and this already for thousands of years (the use goes back to the Incas).
With community control the coca farmers are trying to avoid misuse of their holy plant. I think it is a good idea to make a clean self-control, but also I believe that cocaine makes some people very rich and they will always find their way around.
They even want Coca-Cola Company to change their name.

Some background information on the case, you can find here: Bolivia Coca Trade (BOLCOCA)

Related Posts on Drugs
Dreams and Results, I am interviewing VivaRio’s executive director about their program in a favela.
personal message, I am talking about the 2 districts Lapa and Santa Teresa in Rio de Janeiro.

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:

Sorry, but no chance. I have to cure my voice.

A trip to Nilópolis, a city in the Rio state, showed me once again how samba is influencing the people’s life and their understanding of their world/surroundings.

The Nilopolis Samba School is called ‘Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Beija-Flor’ and was founded after x-mas in 1948. The initial founders were Milton de Oliveira (Negao da Cuíca), Edson Vieira Rodrigues (Edinho do Ferro Velho), Helles Ferreira da Silva, Mário Silva, Walter da Silva, Hamilton Floriano e José Fernandes da Silva.

— So far … everything was fine with me.
Walking around with friends they were introducing their district to me. The first thing was the big sculpture of the Beija-Flor and right away we stepped into the world of Samba. (accidently?)
Knowing that I am an architect and having this site here, they explained the history and development of Nilópolis. Two growth spurts were noticed: In the 70s and the last 5 years. The reason they gave to me was the results of the Beija-Flor School of carnival. It is true that the school won in 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1983, 1998, 2003, 2004, 2005 e 2007. So twice they won in 3 consecutive years the carnival: in the 70s and in the beginning of the millennium, which is a special honour.
According to my friends the city of Nilópolis has not only grown because of the results, but also increased taxes, suffered a boom of real estate and commercialization of the whole city and an overall of increase in richness and wellness. And that all due to samba!
Checking the internet I found out that the facts are true, but I have my doubts on the causes of these facts.

The 1970s:
The Human Development Index (HDI), which is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and standard of living for countries worldwide, increases from the 1970 to 1980 for 0.25 points to 0.73. (To give you a reference: high HDI is more than 0.8 and a low HDI is above 0.5.) But this could be due to anything. The increase is nothing extraordinary comparing it to other districts of the carioca metropolitan area. The same can be observed of the increase of inhabitants in the region.
Lucia Mazzillo Costa already talked about the real estate boom in the 70s in Rio.

The Beginning of the Millennium:
Rio’s politics about urbanism is on a good way to make people live outside of the centre which is –according to them- already bursting. One of the alternatives is to donate people living on illegal ground a ‘house in the countryside’ including the a basket with the minimum food every month (the famous 1R$-mini houses of ‘morar legal’). This might be another way to obtain more votes, but I don’t believe it a valuable solution for the situation in Rio.
The other reason might be the middleclass looking for calm condominios (alphavilles/watched communities) with reasonable prices – causing an increase in irresponsible traffic problem, since public transport is not the best.
Even though when in 1858 the connection to the Central (the main station in Rio) caused the first big nucleus of Nilópolis with former farmers working in the city, today this connection is so slow that going to Rio spoils the whole day. You need a car or take the bus to work in Rio.

But still I like that way of thinking. Samba seems always an easy melody but it is full of tragedy but it gives the people the will to survive.