Okay, let’s see…weekend was low-key and awesome, hung out largely in an artsy hill neighborhood called Santa Teresa. Even hung off the side of a streetcar on our way up on Sunday, was quite adventurous and the views were great. My apologies that these posts aren’t particularly illustrated…I haven’t been wandering around with a camera for various reasons.
Back in class on Monday, we started the day with a rare visit to the Brazil branch of the Ford Foundation. I’m definitely interested to learn more about the operations of their New York flagship office, but seems their name is on most things human-rights-related down here, so it was nice to learn a bit about their agenda.
In the afternoon we ran back to PUC for a presentation about Olhares de Morro. The guy who runs the organization is a French art photographeur who has organized various young photographers living within the favelas to sell their work and exhibit internationally. Vincent made it clear that he is not an ‘educator’ but a professional working among other professionals, which was a refreshing take on the youth media model. Their work was pretty impressive, too….we even stopped by their studio in Lapa on Wednesday afternoon.
Monday night saw the first of our sangria episodes, at a chill outdoor bar in Ipanema. We’ve got a fun crew of people around here, for sure.
Tuesday saw us back at VivaRio for a talk on ‘Digital Inclusion’ – it seems my initial research on web access in Brazil was optimistic at best (I should hopefully have better numbers sometime soon, the woman speaking offered to send us the presentation). She also spoke about the intensely concentrated media conglomerates in this country, and the amount of media outlets owned by politicians and their families…a recipe for badness, essentially. I’ve been watching the nightly TV news since that talk, and picking up another paper periodically.
Wednesday we spent the morning at the Museo do Indio for a neat exhibit on the Tisakisu group in the Amazon. It was their wish to use various media (video, audio, photo, print) to preserve elements of their culture in a time in which mainstream Brazilian TV is occupying the attention of their youth.
After sangria episode number two, that afternoon in the Cinelandia area (nothing quite like plastic tables in a plaza), we took our drunken posse to an excellent multilingual bookstore in Centro. We then had an opening that evening for a photo exhibit done by our professor. I had the long-awaited pleasure of meeting Graziela of Avaaz, as well, along with a very cool friend of hers from South Dakota.
Thursday morning we headed out to Cidade de Deus to visit a program run by CUFA. The presentation was unfortunately quite disjointed for an organization that sounds supercool (mission has to do with using hip-hop culture to build critical consciousness and self-esteem among youth) but I did come out with a much greater appreciation for grafitti in this country.
In the afternoon we were back at Nos do Cinema for a presentation on the youth (multi)media work being done there, which was superdynamic. The kids were a really fun and inspiring bunch. It was at this point also that I realized that a bunch of the ideas I’d had for my Fulbright project were just dead wrong (I’ll explain in a later entry)…but I think I’ve a much better idea of how to re-route the issues effectively, so hooray for that knowledge.
So much exciting stuff, still…
Today we spent the morning with CDI at their main office in Laranjeiras. I’d seen their CEO Rodrigo Baggio speak at NYU last fall; he’s amazing and very charismatic. Sadly we missed him today but we got a rundown on his NGO’s history: Twelve years ago, Rodrigo had a classic corporate breakdown, decided he was doing nothing with his life, and started gathering old donated computers, putting them in low-income communities in Rio, and started a fourth-month technical literacy program to go with them. Now, CDI has hundreds of educational ‘telecenters’ all over South America, even in South Africa, with offices in NYC and Boston to work on fundraising. We then visited their center in the Providencia neighborhood.
And this afternoon we had the good fortune of meeting the celebrated documentary filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho, talking with him, and screening his film Babilonia 2000. Coutinho was terribly sharp and entertaining, and I took a lot away from his discussion of the way he does documentaries.
Another great week.
Had a lovely trip last week on Brazil’s TAM Airlines from JFK to Rio, via Sao Paulo. I arrived to my lovely apartment in Copacabana, settled in, and promptly took a walk along the beach. Spent Sunday walking down to Ipanema and sitting on the rocks at Arpoador, mesmerized by sun and surf and surfers.
But alas, I’m here for more than just time on the beach! As mentioned previously, I’m taking a three week class on human rights and media (which marks the end my master’s degree). This trip is also quite special, as my time here is a sort of preview to the ten months I will spend here next year while working on my Fulbright project. Other than my general excitement and delight at everything from the strange delicious fruits to the music, the beach culture, and new Brazilian friends, I’m really enjoying feeling like my Portuguese is getting better every day.
So, class started on Monday at PUC, the private Jesuit university in Gavea, where our professor Peter Lucas has worked out of the law school’s division of human rights. In the morning we had a talk on the concept of citizenship in Brazil, along with a summary of the biggest human rights issues in Brazil today, basically, police violence, economic inequality, and slave labor in rural areas. After lunch at the first of the many “kilo” places we’ve been to this week, we had a group discussion about the class schedule and what to expect for the next few weeks.
Tuesday kicked off with a visit to Kabum!, an NGO that works to provide media training and career development for marginalized youth from in and around Rio. Their warehouse space was incredibly dynamic and the kids hanging around and in classes were a lot of fun. I may well hang around there next year, as the project I’m doing will be marketed to high schoolers, and I think it would do me good to understand and appreciate my audience a bit better.
The afternoon saw us back at an organization called VivaRio, the largest media NGO in the city, with which our professor has collaborated for many years. We spent a good part of the week at VivaRio, for talks and documentary screenings. Tuesday afternoon we spoke with two photographers from the VivaFavela web portal about the groundbreaking work they’ve done over the last couple years to “broaden the digital inclusion of [low-income] communities and to reduce social inequality.”
On Wednesday morning we actually took the train up to the massive Cristo statue at Corcovado, in part to get a better idea of the layout of the city and in part to enjoy the devastatingly beautiful view. I haven’t carried my camera with me this week for various reasons, but I wish I’d had it that day. In any event, I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and am really happy to be here. The weather has even been perfect, warm and sunny, every single day.
That afternoon saw us back at VivaRio for a talk on the year-old, tri-lingual portal ComunidadSegura. This was definitely one of the highlights of the week for me, as I got to bond with the presenters as a tech geek (the back-end of the site is Drupal) and appreciate the fact that one woman had the job I’m looking to fill in 3-5 years or so, that of web researcher/editor, very similar to what I did as an intern this spring for both NCRCR and The Opportunity Agenda. I really enjoyed hearing about the development and daily functioning of their website, and it was reassuring to see that there are opporunties for work in my tiny little corner of interest.
Thursday morning (after a trip to the incredibly exciting weekly food market on our street) we heard from Mauricio Lissovsky about a small arms disarmament campaign he was involved with, along with our professor. Deaths by handgun are through the roof in Brazil. Mauricio spoke about the two sides of a media campaign leading up to a 2005 referendum to ban the sale of guns in Brazil, which was voted down despite the fact that 80% of Brazilians were in favor of it only weeks before the election. The Right’s argument that Brazilians should have the right to bear arms hit a nerve in a nation in which people don’t have a terrible amount of faith in the police, causing a landslide change in public opinion on the issue.
In the afternoon we screened a film by Daniela Broitman “My Brazil,” about the process in which she worked to obtain funding to help a group of community organizers in Rio get to the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Our professor is close friends with Daniela, and she came to speak with us, and actually brought along one of the organizers from the film, a tremendous energetic and charismatic woman named Gaucha. Daniela’s spoke about her desire to combine media production and social activism; given that she just won a Guggenheim fellowship, I’m sure she’ll be one of those people to watch over the next couple years.
That evening we got to screen ‘Estamira,’ the most talked-about documentary in Brazil this year. I don’t wish to spoil this as I’d recommend getting your hands on a copy if possible (should be released for sale within a few months) but the director Marcos Prado also came to speak with us about his work. We’ve had lots of really special opportunities this week.
Friday began with a trip to TV ROC on the edge of Rio’s largest favela, Rocinha. After a wildly exciting moto-taxi ride up the hill, we walked down through the community with some leaders from the local neighborhood association. I have a lot of mixed feelings about our walk through Rocinha, having walked by 4 or 5 young guys with machine guns, essentially performing their watchdog role for the local drug gangs. For an illustration of this dynamic, from afar, the best recommendation I can offer is that you get your hands on a copy of the TV mini-series ‘City of Men’ (available on Netflix). There is also a good deal of tension in Rio at the moment as the Pan American Games are going to be held here, 20 days away. I’ve heard various people allege that the police are doing their best of seal off the favelas while the city is mobbed with foreigners, and police raids of the favelas are generally quite brutal. I only bought the paper once this week, as I’ve been busy, but the front cover had a story about a shooting spree in a favela we’re supposed to be visiting this week or next, a fairly common occurrence these days. I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes.
The only other thing that has disturbed me this weeking is seeing the public service announcements about Dengue Fever, an illness spread by mosquitos that I’d heard about back during my days in Costa Rica. I then learned that I’m only 3 or so degrees away from someone who died from it recently, in Rio itself (unless you’re in the Amazon, there isn’t much else you need to worry about here, yellow fever etc). So I’m walking around with my bugspray, and applying every evening that I’m outside (often) and just trying not to think about it other than that. I know the chances of getting dengue are super-low, and it kills an even smaller amount of people, but I still wish it weren’t an issue here, ’cause this is such a cool city and I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time here.
Today I have significantly less to report: I went to the beach for a while and have been hanging out and reading in our hammock (‘Doing Documentary Work’ by Robert Coles). There are, of course, various issues I’d love to talk about (racial dynamics here, issues od gender and sexuality in Brazil, etc) but I’m about to head out to a festival with some friends. So…more soon.
