Elite Squad 2 Opens in the UK, Guardian Writes on the Film’s Social Investigaion

Elite Squad 2: A Social Investigation

As Elite Squad 2 opens in the UK, the Guardian has a great column on the role of the “Favela Film” in Brazil and beyond.

 

When Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite), José Padilha’s film about Rio de Janeiro’s infamous military-police unit, BOPE, was released in 2007 the director found himself under siege. Many critics found its full-frontal assault on the issue of favela violence – baldly narrated by the trigger-happy Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura) – too much to take. Varietydubbed it “a one-note celebration of violence-for-good”, while Brazilian film critic Marcelo Janot said: “It’s really dangerous when a film suggests that the fascist BOPE methods are the only solution to ‘clean’ a city.

They’d probably take the dim view of Padilha’s decision to make a sequel, with Nascimento, the Brazilian Dirty Harry, picking up where he left off: crouched behind a car under a storm of gunfire. It’s the same American-style action dynamic at front of house, and behind it, an attempt at Hollywood business acumen – a proper franchise with its very own colonically irrigated title, Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within. And it paid off handsomely, breaking a 35-year-standing record to become Brazil’s most popular homegrown film ever, both in terms of admissions (11.3m) and box office ($63m).

In answer to the accusations against the first Elite Squad, Padilha pointed out (to Demetrios Matheou in the excellent Faber Book of New South American Cinema that there was a precedent for the critics’ kneejerk reaction: “I don’t know if people remember that when City of God was released in Brazil, it was accused of glorifying drug dealers,” he said. “What’s happened with me is exactly the same thing that happened with Fernando [Meirelles], which was the critics jumped down his throat. This is the one thing the two movies have in common. There is a film ideology that says films about social issues should give the audience critical distance, in order to evaluate what’s going on … I think the great thing Fernando did was say, ‘Let’s make a movie that has social content, but it’s gonna grab you by the balls.’ It’s gonna be emotive, and we’re going to run with it and you won’t have time to think while it goes on … You can think when the film is over.” They were both, in other words, walking the same fine line, blending urgent social comment with the slick air of commercial entertainment that is the Hollywood stock-in-trade: Meirelles’s film inherited the Goodfellas swagger, while Elite Squad was the offspring of numerous nu-metal-scored butt-kickers.

Both attracted attention in the west (City of God took Cannes 2002 by storm, Elite Squad won Berlin’s Golden Bear in 2008) because of their commerciality, but it’s impossible to overstate how important the emphasis on social commentary is. It’s a key characteristic of the noughties Latin American film-making boom and it’s exactly this kind of contentious material that would get focus-grouped out of most films under the US studio system. Over the last decade Brazil’s commercial cinema has made a virtue of systematically auditing the deprivation, violence and bribery that’s under discussion daily in the country.

Padilha isn’t franchise-building so much as sustaining a programme of social investigation (doubly so in his case: he also made the magnificent hijack documentary Bus 174. In step with its greying protagonist, The Enemy Within is more mature; a political, rather than an action, thriller. There’s no question this time of fascistic leanings: the jibes at hypocritical dope-scoring liberals have been replaced with clean admiration for the film’s one leftwing figure, Fraga (Irandhir Santos), based on Marcelo Freixo, an actual MP who headed a parliamentary commission on militias in the favelas (and consulted on the film). There are other real-life counterparts, too: Fortunato (André Mattos), the rightwing shock jock involved in a conspiracy to exploit the slum-dwellers, apparently apes the camera-hogging histrionics of Wagner Montes, a well-known TV presenter.

Read The Rest, Via Guardian…

Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within (Tropa De Elite 2: O Inimigo Agora E Outro)

1. Production year: 2010
2. Country: Rest of the world
3. Runtime: 117 mins
4. Directors: Jose Padilha
5. Cast: Andre Ramiro, Irandhir Santos, Milhem Cortaz, Wagner Moura
6. More on this film

Culture & Art: New Film About the Infamous Ayrton Senna da Silva

The story of Ayrton Senna is so amazing! I just love this guy, he had such a good heart! I can’t wait to see this!

Ayrton Senna: Drive fast, leave sparks

(Via The Economist)

AT THE time of his death at age 34, Ayrton Senna da Silva was already being called one of the greatest Formula One drivers of all time, if not the greatest. A three-time world champion, he was known for his effortless grace and precision on the road, and his baffling knack for racing in the rain. He also looked like a movie star. It’s no wonder that Asif Kapadia, a BAFTA-winning British filmmaker, chose him for a documentary subject.

Senna was a passionate figure, charismatic and full of bravado. He believed zealously in both God and Brazil. Born to a wealthy family in São Paulo, to whom he remained devoted, he was also a generous philanthropist during a particularly miserable economic time for the country. Millions of people attended his funeral (making his the country’s biggest), and Brazil honoured him with three days of mourning. He was also quite vocal about improving the rules and safety standards of Formula One. But it took his death and that of Roland Ratzenburg—both at Italy’s 1994 San Marino Grand Prix—for the sport to get safer. The changes made a difference. Senna was the last Formula One driver to have died on the track.

Brazilian Media: Fantástico – Brazil’s Best Television News Program

Fantástico is Brazil’s own, idiosyncratic answer to Sixty Minutes.

Fantástico regularly lives up to its name and satisfies Brazil’s passion for the supernatural and the offbeat. In 1996 it created a major stir with exclusive footage of what it claimed to be two UFOs seen over Brazilian cities. And in 2001, it had a report about a flying woman who was found in a Brazilian village.

This hour-long show features short, always interesting news reports on world events, interviews with international celebrities as well as great investigative reporting and funny clips and out-takes from television around the world. Fantástico in many ways holds a mirror up to Brazil’s attitude to the world and its place in it. As a result, the show simultaneously reflects the country’s seriousness and its surreal sense of fun.

A staple of Brazilian television for more than three decades, Fantastico competes even with the telenovelas at the top of the nation’s TV ratings. In its many years on air, Fantástico has interviewed international stars from Pele to Paul McCartney, Alfred Hitchcock to Bill Gates and even Michael Jackson. The show has started to gain a popular online following due to the outrageous nature of some of their reports, and also because of their international celebrity performances. You will find many clips from Fantástico on YouTube. Fantástico is aired on Rede Globo on Sundays at 9:00 PM in Brazil.

Here are some clips from Fantástico that I think really highlight what this hour-long news show is all about:

Brazilian Politician Uses Stolen Donations to Build Himself a Castle

Edmar Moreira: taking plitical greed to a whole new level

This first one I remembered watching the last time I was in Brazil in 2009. It really struck me because it reveals the sheer brazenness of corruption in Brazilian politics, and the attitude of helplessness that Brazilian people feel in preventing this kind of thing from happening. It is also testament to the fearlessness of Fantástico’s investigative reporting in a country where corruption runs deep and can be a dangerous thing to talk about. Basically what happened was that this small-time politician,  Edmar Moreira, a representative from the state of Minas Gerais, secretly built this totally ostentatious medieval-style CASTLE (using funds stolen from social contributions) somewhere out in the countryside. That’s right, it was not a just mansion, but a castle. And unsurprisingly, this castle did not appear in his tax return. “Castle Vania,” as it is called, is reported to be worth more than $20 million reais. Moreira probably would have gotten away with this whole thing if Fantástico’s reporters hadn’t come in and blown his cover, reporting that this castle actually belonged to him. Since the story became so public and controversial, the Brazilian General Attorney (Ministério Público) made some public statements of outrage regarding the matter and promised to investigate. Of course, the case against Moreira is still pending and he has run again for re-election.

 

An Illiterate Man Enrolls In A For-Profit School In Brazil

Ok, this second video clip is a bit newer, and I couldn’t find the clip of this story that was aired on Fantástico, but it also illustrates the Brazilian media’s brilliant investigative reporting.

Some background on this story is that for-profit “educational institutions” have become a recent phenomenon in Brazil, much in the way that they have here in the United States. It has become common knowledge that for-profit schools use shady recruiting practices (like the way University of Phoenix recruiters were notoriously caught going to homeless shelters to boost their enrollment numbers). Basically for-profit education has no standards and they will let anyone into these schools because students are just like paying customers, so more students means more money. So what happened here was that journalists found an illiterate man who had passed the entry exam of a for-profit school in Brazil. The illiterate candidate says that he “just guessed” on the questions which resulted in him passing the test. He then attended the school for three years. Even though they profess having standards for entry, would a school really admit a student who couldn’t read or write anyway just for their own gain? The answer was yes.

Here’s the link for article from Rede Globo if you prefer to read about it:

http://g1.globo.com/concursos-e-emprego/noticia/2010/04/analfabeto-que-passou-em-concurso-frequentou-escola-por-apenas-3-anos.html 

Michael Jackson Interviewed in Brazil

And lastly, here’s an interview by Fantástico with Michael Jackson in Brazil from 1996. Search for more Fantástico  interviews with American stars on YouTube if you are interested, they have interviewed everyone, even Justin Beiber and Miley Cyrus.

 

This is Fantástico’s Official Website: http://fantastico.globo.com/