Jeff Zimbalist & Matt Mochary:
Favela Rising (Brazil / USA, 2005)
Production: Thinkfilm and HBO/Cinemax Documentary Films
82 min - DVD. Portuguese with English subtitles.
Favela
(f a ve'la) in Brazil, an urban slum or ghetto; illegal squatter settlement.
It's rather a horse of a different colour to have music as a hobby in Brazil from what it is in Finland. In this part of the world, your most serious problem is finding a place to rehearse in or waking up for work in the morning after yesterday's gig. In the slums of Rio de Janeiro, work usually means working for a drug lord, and as that's how your bandmates are also employed, you can consider yourself lucky if you all live to see your 21st birthday.
Favela Rising is a film on how to get along day by day in spite of crushing poverty, illegal drugs and everyday untimely deaths. Jeff Zimbalist and Matt Mochary's documentary is a raw, impressing magnum opus on music in the middle of violence. Favela Rising's protagonist is Anderson Sá, a drug trafficker-cum-musician, and his band, Afro Reggae Group, whose members want to find an alternative to the slum life marinated with illegal drugs and premature death. For the people in the favelas, Afro Reggae is not just music mixing influences from reggae, soul and hip hop – it is a promise of another world, of one where children play plastic bucket drums instead of playing with wooden guns.
The film is an eulogy for the power of community and for the social change that music is capable of bringing forth. Favela Rising has been awarded prizes in several film festivals all around the world.
