favela rising Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Can't get enough of great docs? You may have missed these during their fest runs, but you can still catch them on DVD. Here are seven documentaries from the last couple years that are well worth seeing, if you haven't caught them yet ...

1) Deliver Us From Evil -- Amy Berg's wrenchingly painful documentary about Oliver O'Grady (pictured, above), a pedophile priest who was moved around from parish to parish to prey on unsuspecting families by his boss, Cardinal Roger Mahony , now Archbishop of Los Angeles (who just a couple days ago, announced a $660 million pre-trial settlement of sexual abuse cases involving other priests), in spite of Mahony's knowledge of O'Grady's penchant for raping children, is a must see, and frankly, I'm shocked that more people haven't seen this Oscar-nommed film. It was by far the most powerful film I saw at last year's Toronto International Film Festival last year. If you haven't seen this film, get it in your DVD rental queue post haste.

2) Jesus Camp -- Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing have kind of take the documentary world by storm the past couple of years, with two back-to-back years of being on the feature-length documentary Oscar short list (hey, it's only a matter of time before they win, trust me). In 2005 they made the excellent Boys of Baraka (also worth catching on DVD if you want to have yourself a Rachel-and-Heidi weekend), and then they hit the ball out of the park again with Jesus Camp, about which our own James Rocchi said, "The best horror film I've seen all year is a documentary."

How do you stop violence? How do you stop violence? That's the question that rang through Anderson Sa's head in 1993, after police massacred 21 people in his neighborhood, one of the most dangerous favelas (Portugese for slum squatter settlement) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in retaliation for the gunning down of four policemen by a local druglord. One of the 21 victims was Sa's brother, who was killed in a bar when police blew it up with a grenade. Sa notes in a voiceover:  "It is as if the spinal cord of the favelas has always been broken."

Violence had always been a part of Sa's life - he witnessed a man beaten and shot to death at the age of 10, and by his early teens was working in the drug trade. The Massacre changed everything for him. "I started thinking to myself, how do we stop the violence?" Sa says. He met with Jose Junior, a favela activist known for working with and empowering the most troubled youth, and together, the two founded Afroreggae Noticias (Afroreggae News) to represent the voice of the Afro-Brazilian population. The newspaper was targeted primarily at young people interested in music, specifically reggae, soul and hip-hop. Soon, they opened a cultural community center in the favela Vigario Geral, one of the most violent favelas in Rio. Sa and Junior's vision was to rebuild the community from a grassroots level, by empowering the people and giving young people something to turn to and hold onto besides the drug culture. They sought to give the people of the favelas a reason to rise and unite.

In their film Favela Rising, filmmakers Jeff Zimbalist and Matt Mochary sought to convey a different image of the favelas than what is normally portrayed by the media. Cinematical recently sat down with director Matt Mochary for a phone interview about the film, and how working on it changed his life. This is Part Two of a two-part interview; Part One, an interview with Matt's directing partner, Jeff Zimbalist, is here.

When Jeff Zimbalist got a call from from his good friend Matt Mochary, he didn’t know his life was about to change. Mochary was calling from a favela (slum) in Rio de Janeiro to tell Zimbalist he had found a story the two of them had to make into film, about a movement in Rio called Afroreggae, and the two men behind the movement, Anderson Sa and Jose Junior. Zimbalist quit his job and flew to Brazil, and the two friends spent the next two years filming the story of the Afroreggae movement. The resulting documentary, Favela Rising, is on the Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary and shared International Documentary Association top honors with another film. Cinematical interviewed Mochary and Zimbalist recently about their film, the Afroreggae movement, and how making Favela Rising has changed their lives. This is Part One of the interview, with Jeff Zimbalist. Part Two, with Matt Mochary, will be published tomorrow.

 

Today Show critic Gene Shalit may not love those gay cowboys (yes, we know, they're sheepherders, but "cowboys" sounds so much more rugged and manly), but the rest of the film critics sure do. Brokeback Mountain stomped all over the competition at the Broadcast Film Critics Association's Critics' Choice Awards, snagging wins in three cats, including Best Picture. The film also won honors for Michelle Williams for Best Supporting Actress, in an award shared with Amy Adams for Junebug, and for Ang Lee as Best Director. The BFCA wins bode well for the films shot at Oscar gold next month - five of the six past years winners of Best Picture at the Critics' Choice.

Brokeback's Heath Ledger lost out to Phillip Seymour Hoffman for Capote, and Reese Witherspoon declared, "I love critics! This year, anyway," as she took the Best Actress prize for her portrayal of June Carter in Walk the Line. Paul Giamatti snuck in a surprise victory over George Clooney for Best Supporting Actor, while Crash won the screenplay and ensemble awards.  March of the Penguins continued to dominate the documentary scene, beating out Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Murderball, Mad Hot Ballroom and Grizzly Man, in a race that could end up closely mirroring the Oscars. However, two documentaries that I think should get noms - Favela Rising and Boys of Baraka - were ignored in the Critics' noms in spite of Favela Rising winning the International Documentary Association's top award for feature lenth documentaries in November (actually Favela shared the award with another film, Our Brand is Crisis, but still, other documentary filmmakers thought it rocked). Look for interviews with directors of several documentaries on the Oscar shortlist within the next month here on Cinematical, because we love you, and we know you need your serious film talk to wash the taste of Bloodrayne out of your mouths. 

Complete list of 2005 Critics Award winners and nominees is here.