**Possible Plot Spoilers**
Feature Interview by Juliea Stewart
I meet with filmmakers Jeff and Matt on a chilly London afternoon in the downstairs cafe area of the ICA, drinking some rather nice (and reasonably priced!) hot-chocolate. Our table is just outside the entrance to Martin Bricelj’s Everlandia installation and Jeff is rather taken with the dense, flashing graphics. The son of an activist-father and artist-mother, Jeff was responsible for the somewhat ‘arty’ edit of Favela Rising: an edit which takes the documentary in a more filmic direction and into territory some critics find a little too … Hollywood. But Jeff tells me that he “deliberately made edit choices designed to enhance the viewer’s emotional experience … in order to reach a deeper emotional place”. Jeff wants to reach an audience beyond the “small, exclusive ‘development-rhetoric’ community or the art-house scene”. Put simply: not just singing to the choir.
Jeff is apparently serious, only the occasional smile surfaces from under that baseball cap. This film seems to be part of a bigger life-mission: “The media paints a picture of communities in crisis; our mission is to find and show other realities – this [Favela Rising] is the story of a community succeeding!”
This has been what Matt calls “a long road, many years and a complete team of two!” Matt and Jeff met at film-school in New York. Both had previously traveled through third world countries and both were interested in finding and telling meaningful, positive stories about developing communities. Together, they’ve made a first-film that has garnered multiple awards and an Academy nod.
Matt ‘found’ the project, identifying the community with a success story to share with the world. Matt is warm and charming, chewing breath-freshening gum. He’s the touchy-feely side of this filmmaking pair and I readily believe him when he tells me: “I found and opened the story – a story of increased optimism. From a dark place, they found a way to create success.”
Jeff tells me later that Matt was already deeply committed to the process prior to finding the story and, having been involved in the venture capital arena before making the move into film, was the partnership’s financial spine to begin with. This, explains Jeff, meant that “we were never forced to take investment from companies we’d rather not be involved with – we could be picky. For example X offers to invest but they’re involved in the development of a really bloodthirsty, irresponsible game so we’d rather decline, or Y shows an interest and they’re known to use sweatshops to manufacture product so, again, we decline.” The most powerful aspect, however, is the filmmaker’s insistence that 100% of all profits go back into the community activities – a requirement for all investors!
Making a first film of this nature involved multiple trips to Brazil – sometimes together, sometimes separately. Each filmmaker had their camera and film-stock. Only ‘real’ footage was used, nothing was staged or re-created, although some clips have been adjusted chronologically (there are also some catalogue/stock shots, e.g. aerial footage of the favelas on the hills). I ask them how they managed financially – the filmmaker’s life is hard. Matt tells me that he learned a long time ago to live on the least money. He says that in his experience “personal spending buys aloneness”. At first, all they were aiming for was getting to Tribeca (festival). Matt explains enthusiastically: “It took twenty-five [thousand dollars] to get it to festival. Getting into Tribeca was the big moment … that was ‘making it’! We were happy just to get in! And then many doors opened, awards showered down and investment came from HBO.” That investment allowed the power-two to pick up better deals for completion – for instance, the complex music rights and the sound-design.
In terms of music, the film draws from many talented Brazilian musicians, not just the music of the band AfroReggae and Jeff is very clear: “this is not a music film – this is a film about music as a transformative weapon”.
Matt introduces me to the quietly glamorous Tatiana Dorow – a Brazilian who became involved in Favela Rising during the latter stages of the project, specifically securing the various and complex music copyrights. Tatiana explains: “We wanted to give the authentic Brazilian feel. They [the music rights] weren’t expensive rights so much … it was more negotiation with local musicians … easier in their own language.” Tatiana, a personal friend of Anderson and Junior (the key founding members of AfroReggae – the movement documented in Favela Rising), laughs off her own contributions, but Matt cuts in: “she’s amazing!” I think he’s referring to the securing of the rights but clearly these two share more than a working relationship – they’ve been invited to attend Anderson’s wedding as ‘best couple’!
This is one of the best insights into the depth of the relationship between the filmmakers and their subject – the cultural movement AfroReggae and the changes the movement has brought to the favelas/slums of Rio. It would seem that even being present to document the movement draws all participants into powerful, transformative experience. Matt tells me that through working with AfroReggae, he has learned that “they don’t make excuses and they take away from us the ability to make excuses.” He explains further: “We started our own AfroReggae style movement. We went into a rough Miami neighbourhood, taught film to six youngsters, managed to get two of them jobs and then the public school system showed an interest and scaled the program up to four hundred students!”
Jeff tells me that what he has always been interested in work-ethic and creativity. He is impressed at how “they were able to sustain hope within their project without applause, without pats on the back. Remember, with AfroReggae, they’ve been doing this for thirteen years, the first six they were involved nobody [outside the favela] noticed them, and they faced many disappointments, including death of their members.”
I ask Jeff is he feels ‘transformed’ by his experiences. His response is illuminating – “I would say that the best quality that I have absorbed resilience – that’s what rubbed off in the process. My personal parallel would be with the editing – alone with FinalCutPro, working at night, when there are no distractions … or less distractions!”
Persevering with the edit was facilitated with built-in deadlines and having to send rough-cuts to AfroReggae in Brazil so that Anderson and Junior were also involved in the edit stylistically, “advising and ensuring edit choices were consistent with their streets … it’s their story”. Jeff was also forced to cut around certain storylines and themes; specific codes and conducts could not be fully revealed for fear of retribution from the drug-armies. I ask them about the dangers of Americans in the Brazilian slums and they tell me that walking into a favela with cameras would ordinarily mean death, but walking in with AfroReggae gains “tacit permission of the drug-lords, even makes you a hero!” The filmmakers were treated as experts with credibility and some ‘challenges’ were actually what Matt refers to as ‘advantages’! He says the first advantage was ignorance: “as foreigners to that culture, we didn’t understand how dangerous it actually was!”
The film documents a sort of ‘miracle’ – or, at the very least, a medical solution known to work about as often as my winning Lotto numbers. Critics seem to be split evenly between a ‘wow’ reaction on one hand, and pure cynicism on the other. I ask how these two feel about such negativity/disbelief. Matt responds: “The further it [the film] goes into the public [domain], the more criticism it’ll face – we wear it like a badge of honour.”
At first, Matt was reluctant to use Anderson’s accident and subsequent paralysis as part of the film (Jeff may have had an inkling that it was just this sort of turn of events that makes award-winning documentary) but the decision was made for them when Anderson specifically requested that his accident and paralysis be recorded as part of the film. The subsequent operation prompted the shift of focus within the film to a more personal take on the story of the movement.
Matt and Tatiana describe the almost mystical approach of Anderson and Junior as one that reaches out to a Higher Power (and not necessarily believing that one should be better than another). Their agenda is not based on any particular sect, they are multi-faith: Junior sporting a Shiva tattoo on his shoulder, Anderson a tattoo of Christ on his. “They embrace anything that feeds their energy. They’ve been involved in AfroReggae for thirteen years and they’ve needed to refresh themselves at different junctures – they’re very open to anything, beliefs, superstition, mysticism”.
Not that all this faith and miracle stuff is ‘soft’ - Jeff says that he was particularly interested in AfroReggae’s concept of an ‘artistic-army’, their use of war metaphor, their militancy, boot-camps for musical workshops – even creating percussion sequences to gunshot rhythms! Jeff describes this as “a real application of what the Buddhists call ‘skillful means’”.
I ask Jeff what’s next? He’s emphatic: “The film isn’t over – we’ll be using the film in relevant communities. Now that we have funding from Ford, we can take this film of AfroReggae to favelas/poor neighbourhoods of the world, so they can see the truth. We can do more [percussion] workshops with local partners that have some infrastructure, and even the screenings themselves have recruitment potential (recruiting youth out of drug-armies and into AfroReggae).”
Interested in promoting the inside-out, down-up, asset-based development that AfroReggae practice and preach, Jeff finishes: “We want to make films with a message, the content being about new perspectives in development. We want to use filmmaking as a tool – to find some way, an ability to make these kinds of stories more mainstream and also a vehicle of change across the social spectrum. Working with [disadvantaged] people and teaching them pride – that the world cares about your voice. With filmmaking, you can use the process as a tool, because we can value the process as much as the product.” He pauses, laughs a little and notes that this last sounds rather Marxist. What I’m hearing is far more Zen: the journey is as valuable as the destination. I ask him where he thinks this passion comes from – this motivation to find and promote these uplifting stories (he’s looking at a community in Columbia for a next project), he laughs - a big, beautiful laugh: “good parenting!”
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