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HBO: How did each of you came to the project?
Matt Mochary: I was invited down to Brazil by the Hewlett
Foundation for a small conference they were
giving on social activism in Brazil. At that
conference I met Anderson and Junior, and
immediately knew that theirs was a story that
had to be told. I realized very quickly that this
was going to require more filmmaking
experience than I had at that time, so I called
the best filmmaker I knew, Jeff Zimbalist. And
it took Jeff about five minutes to decide to
quit his job and come down to Brazil and
make the film with me.
Jeff Zimbalist: I was interested in telling stories of
communities in the third world, and
particularly in Latin America that were
overcoming the odds and breaking through
adversity and beating the obstacles to really
fight for change and fight for a new definition
of community and of justice. I'd found a
lot of those communities in traveling through
Latin America, and I think that Matt, who had
a very similar way of traveling as I did, where
we really sought out leaders and heroes and
inspirations in communities that worked
rather than communities that didn't.
Matt and I connected on that idea, on using
media as a vehicle for change, as a vehicle for
telling stories of people who were overcoming
the odds and bringing those stories back to
the U.S., so that audiences don't just see the
third world as a place that's falling apart and
full of crisis and conflict. I think that it was serendipitous that Matt
came across a really powerful example of that
model in this group Afro Reggae who works
from the inside out, and has really done all of
their change internally themselves. So I think
it became obvious to him that we should team
up and bring this story to life.
HBO: What were your first impressions when you
arrived?
Jeff Zimbalist: The thing that most struck me about Rio
when I first got there was the extreme
proximity of the very, very poor and the very,
very rich geographically, yet the extreme
distance between those two communities
socially, economically, culturally. It was so
glossy and seductive down near the beach and
the glitzy tourist area. It was so gritty and
edgy just several hundred meters away in a
lot of cases. How do these two communities
interact or how does the lack of interaction
speak somehow to a more universal
relationship between the rich and the poor, or
the third world and the first world? How is
this juxtaposition a microcosm?
HBO: Describe what a 'favela' is.
Matt Mochary: A favela is an illegal squatter settlement. But
it's much more common than those words
make it sound. It's a poor area or a slum. And
approximately twenty-five percent of the
eleven million people that live in Rio, live in
favelas. There's no property rights, there's
very little infrastructure, very little water,
sewers, roads. Rarely are there schools. There
are basically no government services because
the government considers these areas to be
illegal squatter settlements, so they don't
provide any services. Brazilians think of these
areas as very violent, crime-ridden, and
deadly to any outsider who steps inside their
walls.
We found a very different reality. We found
that, yes, there were drug trafficking
organizations that controlled the favelas, but
that they comprised a tiny percent of the total
population, and the rest were hard working,
law-abiding citizens who wanted to move their
lives forward in an honest manner.
And the challenge, of course, in the favela is
that there's very little access to the ability to
move your life forward in an honest manner.
There are no schools, so you can't learn the
skills to get jobs. The jobs that are available,
the wages that get paid are less than
subsistence level. So you literally can't earn
enough money to eat. Often, drug trafficking
is the only way to put enough money on the
table to eat. And the shocking part about it is
that even drug trafficking is not lucrative.
HBO: In the film, Anderson turns from a life of
crime to using non-violence and music and
dance to inspire and change himself and his
community. What was so different about what
Anderson did?
Matt Mochary: He was overcome with inspiration. But
seemingly crazed inspiration because there's
no logical reason why if you celebrate dance
and music peace will occur. What do the two
have to do with anything? If your weapon is
music, how can you fight against an AK-47?
That makes no sense. And yet he kept going.
He and his partners taught themselves how to
play drums. Anderson wrote a song and they
started singing and people kind of liked it.
And then people started listening. And they
listened to the message because they could
understand it.
And so Anderson wrote more songs, and the
band played more music. And all of a sudden
they started training little kids who were just
hanging around. And then all of a sudden the
Ford Foundation came to them and said, you
guys may not realize this, but you're actually
doing really good work. You're keeping these
kids out of the drug traffic organizations.
We're gonna give you some money to expand.
And Afro Reggae was like, wow that's amazing.
And a few years later Universal Records said,
we don't really care so much about your
community work but your music... it's really
good, and we wanna sell it.
So they started from a place of illogical hopes
and dreams and ended up in a place where
they defied all logic, and proved that this
seemingly impotent weapon called music can
actually overcome the seemingly very potent
weapons called guns and drugs and money.
HBO: Describe what you mean by "development
models."
Jeff Zimbalist: Well, it's a question of how to create
sustainable mobilization in a community that
is usually stereotyped as being paralyzed.
That's the metaphor we use in the film; the
idea of a community being able to move itself
versus a community being straight-jacketed or
paralyzed. In terms of development models, when
the over-developed countries of the world have
defined third world development, or the
under-developed section of the world, they
often say they're waiting for our help. And it's
created a mentality in the third world of
paternalism. That it's unfair, it's unjust, and
they wallow in their sort of hopelessness,
waiting for somebody from the outside to
provide a prescription, an answer, resources,
some sort of mobility.
For those working in the grassroots of
third world development, it became clear in
the last twenty years or so that the way for a
community really to create change was that
they had to do it themselves. Why? Because if
you depend on somebody else to provide you
with an answer or with resources, you're
dependent; the second they pull the resources
or they decide not to work with you anymore,
you're right back to where you started.
If you generate that mobility yourselves, then
you're always gonna have a leader inheriting,
or a predecessor taking on that role of guiding
the community in the direction it wants to go
in. That's called "inside out" because the
ideas come from the community itself. It's
really just a question of sustainability.
Through making your own change you
become empowered, you build leadership
ability in the youth, and you create role
models that will lead, in this case, youth away
from drugs and violence and discrimination. It
will lead toward gang reduction and violence
prevention, and conflict mediation. Strategies
that build community rather than separate
community. Afro Reggae is a great
example of that model, of inside out, ground
up, asset-based community development.
I think that's a real important message,
that this is a universal model. That's why
we've been using the film in the outreach
capacity, very ambitiously, to try and
influence community groups local leaders and
and NGO's (non-governmental organizations)
throughout the world to take this as
inspiration.
HBO: What are some of the things that have
happened as a result of the film's success?
Jeff Zimbalist: Well the film has succeeded far beyond our
wildest dreams. But I think we judge the
success of the film insofar as it inspires its
viewers to take action. So its success just
feeds a much greater cause, which is using
the film not only as entertainment, but as a
real vehicle for change. So what does that
mean? It means that when we get the film on
television with HBO, we're only seventy
percent of the way there. The film needs to be
used in the communities where it is most
relevant; it needs to speak to youth who are
the hardest to reach, who otherwise would not
ever consider involving themselves in an
organized group, or a peaceful group.
There's a sharing of experience. And I think by
imagining themselves a part of that
community in Brazil, they start to open up the
capacity to think about peaceful means, to
think about using music and culture and art
and education as a way of moving forward,
and not just violence and aggression and one-
upmanship.
So we've taken the film to L.A. and Chicago
and New York, and we've screened it in Haiti;
we dubbed the film into Creole, and we played
it outdoors for 8,400 Haitians. And the idea is
to get these communities to ask, how can we
use culture and art to improve the lives of our
own children here in our own communities?
How can we do things ourselves, rather than
wait for change to come from the outside? And
it's always a really ripe dialogue. These days,
in addition to showing the film and creating
workshops, we're now partnering with the
Ford Foundation, Amnesty International, and
the Global Fund for Children, among others,
to find very specific community groups in
Africa, Asia and in the Caribbean with whom
we can build long term projects with the film
as a catalyst to bring resources and youth
into the same space, and to create a dialogue
about specific projects.
Matt Mochary: When I lived with these guys, I found myself
no longer able to make excuses of why I
couldn't participate in the solution or why a
solution wasn't possible. Because these guys
make no excuses, and the obstacles they face
are so much higher than those that most of us
face. So in my own life, I've started to walk
the walk and not just talk the talk.
I hope this film allows other people to receive
as much inspiration as we did and realize
that each of us can make a difference, not
just for others, but for ourselves. And also
to inspire those who have not yet realized that
it's worth fighting this fight, and to inspire
them to do so.
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