Dir. Jeff Zimbalist & Matt Mochary, US, 2005, 80 mins, subtitles
Cast: Jose Junior, MC Anderson
Review by Juliea Stewart
Favela Rising is a multi-award-winning, eighty minute journey that documents the incredible story of a charismatic man, an inspirational movement and an unfolding miracle - with an ending that will send a shiver up your spine.
Directors Jeff Zimbalist and Matt Mochary searched for positive, uplifting stories about modern communities. They spent two years documenting this real-life drama on repeat visits to Rio (some archive footage is also used).
What started as an investigation into the rise of AfroReggae in the Brazilian slums (favelas) becomes the dramatic and personal story of a modern hero. The documentary is predominantly the first-person sub-titled narration of a self-effacing modern hero: Anderson Sa – a man with a vision and some very special friends.
Jose Junior started holding beach parties where people could come to dance. Reformed drug-dealer and aspiring MC Anderson came to these parties that formed the early stages of a grassroots cultural revolution. Together they turned music into social work.
We have ‘visited’ some of violence and jealously guarded territories of the drug-armies in the slums (favelas) outside Rio in City of God (Cidade de Deus). In these places minors die violently by bullet in jaw-dropping numbers, one person dies every six days from a stray police bullet, journalists are murdered for filming and anyone who talks is brutally ‘erased’ … events which are depicted, described and demonstrated graphically in the opening minutes of the film and throughout.
The documentary is sparing with statistics and heavy on personal drama – it’s a meaningful mix. The facts shown in typeface, while few, are weighty. Too many, we’d have been punch-drunk, the right-mix we’re shocked, moved. It’s a lot to take in, to even remotely grasp, living in fear and in such unbelievable conditions.
Visually the piece ties together well – key imagery is repeated strategically through the documentary to good, although somewhat ‘feature-filmic’, effect. The edit-style is gracious and artistic (not surprising: the director has previously had work featured at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York). The soundtrack features original music in the style and the percussion is raw/ecstatic, the rap immediate/passionate.
The ‘crew’ is introduced with a freeze-frame and graffiti style font in a dissolve revealing identity: tagging. Elsewhere we swing between perspectives (a visual ‘on-the-other-hand’) and see something of the Andreas Gursky in aerial shots of the favelas, graded with a wash reminiscent of faded stone-wash jeans. Altogether, it’s a dreamlike but menacing cloud with some surprising silver linings.
Vigario Geral, the setting for this story, is one of the most dangerous favelas in Rio - Brazil’s Bosnia. Youngsters accessorize with necklaces of string, mobile-phone pendants and semi-automatic handguns. They make a living dealing drugs and running ‘errands’ for gangsters, errands that easily include murder. In this alligator-swamp, Junior and Anderson formulated workshop plans: to bring percussion to the youth, to give them ‘something else’ – another option. AfroReggae believes that people living in the favelas, particularly the youth, must be given “access to knowledge about culture – (and different options for collectivity) – not just organized crime.”
This is not a case of mouth over trousers. These guys are out there changing the world. Out of the workshops, a band evolved (AfroReggae) and a movement was born, one that began with a small handmade newspaper and an ambitious but simple dream: to use a cultural vehicle as a mechanism for transformation.
We get an inkling of the power of the movement as news of it starts to spread to other favelas. Anderson doesn’t necessarily want the franchise option at first and tells Junior this in his own laid-back disarming way, evidencing charm and great humour. He’s equally laid-back in facing the drug soldiers when they send out the lynch mob. Junior calls him a ‘warrior of the people’. His philosophy: “You have to keep taking risks, living in a warzone, promoting an ideology. It’s like going to war to demand peace, to create a place of hope.”
Music is like water – the universal solvent. It can reach everyone and it can create community unity. As these two street-preachers say: “Music changed our reality!”. It starts with drumming workshops then Benefit concerts are held – the local kids love it, their joy is palpable and uplifting. New kinds of music and dance (hip-hop styles and modified martial arts style capoeira) are incorporated or emerge, they make a video, international media starts to notice them and all the time these events are ‘spreading the message’.
Junior and Anderson become cultural leaders, voices in the community. This role sits particularly well with Anderson, a natural communicator and facilitator … he has the dignity of Gandhi – a non-violent cultural/social revolutionist - with a dash of the Malcolm X intensity. The movement starts to gain respect within the community, even respect from dealers when they realize their own kids now have the option for a better life – they can join the AfroReggae revolution, where you work to feel good about yourself and the things you can buy rather than steal).
It wasn’t easy, this journey. AfroReggae had to be patient, they had to be self-reliant (always waiting at the end of a very long line). They describe their activity as ‘mobilising’ and mobilise they did. What they have done is extremely powerful, highly transformative: tirelessly promoting their new ideology based on music. They came from the gutter and persisted – finally rewarded with US funding (grants from Ford and Rockefeller foundations) and a record deal (Universal) so there was gold at the end of the rainbow – but first there was a lot of acid rain and many setbacks. They just never gave up. They persisted. And they put 100% of all earnings (from music, from the film) back into the community programmes. Go on, read that paragraph again, it’s worth it.
I watched this documentary at a screening where the projected picture was slightly larger than the projection screen. The effect of this was to have the very lower part of the screen appearing on the row of seats in front of me. Far from being distracting, I found this somehow appropriate: this documentary literally overflows and spills inspiration off the screen. Junior’s words echo out at me from the film: life is a karmic process, our actions are infinite.
p.s. Stay to the very end for the Easter-Egg
Discuss this film here
ICA Projects have announced the UK Region 2 DVD release of Favela Rising for 24th July 2006 priced at £19.99.
Presented in 1.85:1 non-anamorphic widescreen with a choice of 2.0 and 5.1 surround audio (in the original Portuguese) English subtitles are burned into the print. There are no extras.
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