/ARTS WEEKLY/ FILM-BRAZIL: A Hidden Side of Rio Revealed

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 11 2004 (IPS) - "Brazil doesn’t know Brazil," says a song by Mauricio Tapajos and Aldir Blanc that was popular in the 1970s and 1980s. The recent boom of documentary films seems to indicate that the country has overcome what some said was an unhealthy national syndrome.

"Fala Tu" (You say it), now showing in cinemas throughout the country, in 74 minutes recounts the lives of three rap singers, showing a reality that is little known and scarcely studied, but involves the big populations of the urban poor.

Thus a side of Rio de Janeiro is revealed that stands in contrast to the stereotypes of a tourist city, Carnival, beaches, sensual women and lush landscapes, or the misery of the ‘favelas’ (slums) overcome by the violence of the drug trade.

The film was made on a shoestring budget by two recent converts from economics to filmmaking, Guilherme Coelho and Nathaniel Leclery, and won the audience award for best documentary at the Rio Film Festival last year.

The three central figures of the film, who live in different neighbourhoods of the metropolis, share a passion for rap music, a style developed in the United States, largely by the black community, and which has become a means of expression and protest for Brazil’s urban marginalized populations.

They also have poverty in common, though they do not live in misery. The three face difficulties in building a better life, and their own tragedies, such as being abandoned by their fathers when very young. The rappers are identified only by their nicknames.

"Macarrao" (Macaroni), 33, composes and sings his verbose and tune-less songs, but he makes a living working at a gambling hall where "jogo do bicho" is played, a popular but illegal lottery whose "bankers" (owners) include the leading funders of Rio’s annual Carnival parade.

One of Macarrao’s songs tells of the humiliations his family suffers in visiting his brother in prison. But what he writes is "an account of daily life, not protest" and is an attempt to explain reality as he experiences it.

His nickname emerged from his childhood, when he was very thin and ate only pasta, but also because the other children called him "macaroni without sauce" because he was noticeably whiter than most of his neighbours.

He lives in a central Rio favela, which his girlfriend hated, as she dreamed of moving to one of the city’s more touristy neighbourhoods, closer to the beach. The girlfriend’s death – occurring with the birth of the couple’s third child – is a tragedy common among the poor, who have only precarious hospitals to go to for medical treatment.

The film records the grief of the mother of the deceased, who blames the hospital and calls into question the purpose of the documentary itself: "If you had filmed the birth we would have had proof of the doctors’ errors."

"God is tired. He no longer pays attention to humanity," comments Macarrao, summing up the hopelessness he and his neighbours feel.

Thogun, a 32-year-old Afro-Brazilian, gives the lie to many stereotypes. The son of a samba musician, he turned to rap, and was one of its pioneers in Rio de Janeiro.

He is a Buddhist, and because of the hard work of his mother he was able to attend and do well in school. He studies journalism at the university and aims to be "the first black presidential spokesman" in Brazil.

But his life is not easy. He considers himself "unemployed" and his income comes from selling an array of products to small shops.

On a city bus, Thogun runs into his father, who had abandoned the family 15 years earlier. The rapper goes on to accompany him, now ill with cancer.

"Combatiente" is the name adopted by the singer who completes the trio of personalities central to "Fala Tu". The 21-year-old black woman, who battles her tendency towards obesity, works providing customer service by telephone for a credit card company.

She left a six-woman group of singers and joined the Santo Daime religious group, which uses a hallucinogenic Amazonian tea in its rituals. "I was born again," says Combatiente, the only one of the three who is confident she can make a living in rap music.

Combatiente’s life brings to the documentary another important component of Brazil’s poor and marginalized urban districts: community radio, which gives rappers a chance to disseminate their music and their message.

"Fala Tu", in its simplicity, is proof that new digital video technologies make it much easier to make good documentaries at low cost, and demonstrates the desire of Brazilians to get to know themselves as a people and nation.