Interview: Jeff Zimbalist

Award-winning doc Favela Rising tells the story of Afro Reggae, a Brazilian band/community group born out of Rio's violent, drug-running Vigario Geral favela in the early 1990s. Led by Anderson Sa, Afro Reggae aim to capture control of the favela back from the drug traffickers through inspiring local kids to take up music rather than guns.

We caught up with the film's American director Jeff Zimbalist to find out more...

How did the idea for the film come about?
Having travelled around parts of the Third World and Latin America, it was important to me to find a way to tell the stories of local communities I was coming across. Most of the stories we hear reported on tend to be dominated by crisis and conflict, but that wasn't my experience. A few years ago, I was teaching technical skills and talking about my vision for the way that media affects peoples' worldviews at a college in New York. One of my students who had been to Rio and met the leaders of the Afro Reggae community told me that I needed to get down there. So, I quit my job and went. Initially, we began making a film about two cities within Rio - about the close proximity of the rich and poor, and the vast economic divide between them. Yet as our relationship with Anderson became stronger, it was clear that a feature film was needed about him and the Afro Reggae movement.

Was it a difficult film to make? Did you ever feel in danger?
The most difficult thing was trying to keep our representation authentic. I didn't grow up in an area anywhere like this. The favela is a war zone; the locals have been trained not to trust any outsider. Yeah, sure, there were challenges of violence and dealings with drug lords, who are the official powers in these communities. The pressure took shape in several different forms - I was held at gunpoint several times by military police with AKs and M16s, who made me show them the video footage that I'd shot. We had to re-edit the film once because we'd revealed the code used by some of the favela's drug dealers, and thus put them, and us, in danger.

Do you think that only someone outside the community could have made the film?
There's a funny story about exactly this. We staged the World Premiere of the film at the Tribeca film festival and brought Junior (a senior member of Afro Reggae) along for a post-screening Q&A. At the end, someone asked him why it took two North Americans to come down to Brazil to make such a film. He said: "because no Brazilians were dumb enough to do so." There was a murder of a Brazilian journalist with a hidden camera in the Vigario Geral in 2002. Since then, the Brazilian media has not told stories from within the favelas.

How did the local community feel about you being there?
You have to remember that 99% of the favela population is not involved with drug trafficking or violence, and they were generally very pleased to see us. I think there was something empowering for them about having outsiders come to the community to make a film. They'd had crews 'pop in' from Europe before, stealing images and then leaving. But we involved the community in the editing process. We had a bunch of workshops and screenings and made edits and changes based upon their opinions and advice. We also gave cameras to favela youth to shoot footage for us. There are now two film workshops in Vigario Geral.

The film's been an international success, but how has it gone down in Brazil?
The film has done really well in the favelas, where it's been screened on DVD, and that's what we would have expected. But it's been a little frustrating in the wealthier areas. We showed it eight times at the Rio international film festival, so we thought people were really digging it, but the distributors are in denial commercially, they don't have much tolerance for it.

What now for Favela Rising and Afro Reggae?
The priority for us is to make sure these kids don't turn back to drug trafficking. We've just got seed money for a very ambitious outreach campaign that will hopefully take the film to favelas around the world, bringing it to communities where it's most relevant. I always saw the film as the beginning of this journey, less as entertainment and more as a catalyst for change.

What changes have you seen in the favela since the film came out?
The community is different every time you go back. It's still a war zone. And, in some ways, by converting a lot of the drug army into musicians, Afro Reggae have weakened the defence mechanism of the favela and left it more susceptible to attack from other drug cartels. But there is a new perception of the favelas from the wealthy and middle class areas around them in Rio and Sao Paulo. And that has to do with more stories like Favela Rising, which show that most of the favela population aren't gangstas or thugs, but a reliable workforce. You're now starting to see more employment opportunities as a result. The police have done a great job with PR, and done some cool symbolic things like encouraging Afro Reggae members to offer graffiti courses to police officers, to developing more of an understanding on one another. But the trafficking, corruption in the system and the roots of poverty are still in place - a film can only do so much.