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Home , Alice Braga, Antonio Pinto (composer), A Lua Me Disse, City of Men, Escrito nas Estrelas, Four Days in September

Please turn off cellphones during screening April 17, 2012 (XXIV:13) Online versions of the Goldenrod Handouts are in color , CITY OF GOD (2002, 130 min.)

Directed by Fernando Meirelles Based on the novel by Paulo Lins Screenplay by Bráulio Mantovani Produced by Andrea Barata Ribeiro and Mauricio Andrade Ramos Original Music by Ed Cortês and Antonio Pinto Cinematography by César Charlone Editing by Daniel Rezende

Alexandre Rodrigues…Buscapé - Rocket Leandro Firmino…Zé Pequeno - Li'l Zé Phellipe Haagensen…Bené - Benny Douglas Silva…Dadinho - Li'l Dice …Cabeleira - Shaggy Matheus Nachtergaele…Sandro Cenoura - Carrot …Mané Galinha - Knockout Ned Jefechander Suplino…Alicate - Clipper Alice Braga…Angélica Emerson Gomes…Barbantinho - Stringy 2002 City of God, 2002 “Cidade dos Homens”, and 2000 “Brava Edson Oliveira…Barbantinho Adulto - Older Stringy Gente.” Michel de Souza…Bené Criança - Young Benny …Berenice - Bernice ED CORTÊS has 5 composer credits: 2007 Not by Chance, 2002 Luis Otávio…Buscapé Criança - Young Rocket Onde a Terra Acaba, 2002 City of God, 2002 “Cidade dos Maurício Marques…Cabeção – Melonhead Homens”, and 2001 Behind the Sun.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES (November 9, 1955, São Paulo, São ANTONIO PINTO has 7 music credits: 2007 Love in the Time of Paulo, ) has 17 director credits: 2011 360, 2011 Cholera, 2006 “Um Menino Muito Maluquinho” (26 episodes), “Brazukas”, 2009 Som e Fúria - O Filme, 2009 “Sound & Fury”, 2005 “Jonny Zero”, 2004 Collateral, 1998 The Nutty Boy 2, and 2008 Blindness, 2002-2005 “Cidade dos Homens”, 2005 The 1998 Central Station. Constant Gardener, 2002 City of God, 2001 Maids, 2000 “Brava Gente”, 1998 The Nutty Boy 2, 1998 E no meio passa um trem, CÉSAR CHARLONE (1958, Montevideo, ) has 19 1997 “A Comedy of Private Lives”, 1989 “Rá-Tim-Bum” (30 cinematographer credits: 2011 La Redota - Una Historia de episodes), 1986 Olhar Eletrônico, 1983 Brasília, and 1983 Marly Artigas, 2010 Futebol Brasileiro, 2009 “Independent Lens” Normal. (Stranded: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors), 2008/II Blackout, 2008 Blindness, 2007 Stranded: I've Come from a Plane That BRÁULIO MANTOVANI has 13 film and TV screenplay credits: Crashed on the Mo untains, 2007 El baño del Papa, 2005 The 2010 : The Enemy Within, 2010 VIPs, 2008 Last Stop Constant Gardener, 2004 “Sucker Free City”, 2002 City of God, 174, 2008 Linha de Passe, 2007 Chega de Saudade, 2007 Elite 2000 “Brava Gente”, 2000 Pierre Fatumbi Verger: Mensageiro Squad, 2007 Querô: A Damned Report, 2006 The Year My Entre Dois Mundos, 1996 Como Nascem os Anjos, 1995 Two Parents Went on Vacation, 2005 Nanoilusão, 2002 , Billion Hearts, 1989 Doida Demais, 1987 The Man in the Black Meirelles—CITY OF GOD—2

Cape, 1987 Feliz Ano Velho, 1985 Aqueles Dois, and 1984 Em Birdwatchers, 2008 “Queridos Amigos” (25 episodes), 2007 Nome da Segurança Nacional. “Amazônia: De Galvez a Chico Mendes”, 2006 Bog of Beasts, 2006 Journey to the End of the Night, 2005 “América” (80 ALEXANDRE RODRIGUES… Buscapé – Rocket (May 21, 1983, episodes), 2005 Red Carpet, 2005 Árido Movie, 2005 Delicate , Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) has 12 acting credits: Crime, 2004 “” (133 episodes), 2002 Eclipse, 2010 “” (90 episodes), 2009 “Paraíso” (160 2002 City of God, 2001 Bufo & Spallanzani, 1999 Castle Ra- episodes), 2008 “Tiempo final”, 2007 “Antônia”, 2007 Tim-Bum, 1999 Gêmeas, 1998 Kenoma, 1998 Midnight, 1998 Forbidden to Forbid, 2006 “Sinhá Moça” (71 episodes), 2006 Central Station, 1997 , and 1997 Anahy Memórias da Chibata, 2005 Cafundó, 2004 “” (61 de las Misiones. episodes), 2003 “Cidade dos Homens”, 2002 City of God, and 2000 “Brava Gente.” SEU JORGE… Mané Galinha - Knockout Ned (b. Jorge Mário da Silva, June 8, 1970, Belford Roxo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) has 11 LEANDRO FIRMINO… Zé Pequeno - Li'l Zé (June 23, 1978, Rio acting credits: 2012 Reis e Ratos, 2010 Elite Squad: The Enemy de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) has 14 acting credits 2011 “A Within, 2008 Carmo, Hit the Road, 2008 The Escapist, 2007 Grande Família”, 2010 “S.O.S. Emergência”, 2009 “Força- Sleepwalkers, 2006 Elipsis, 2006 Tarantino's Mind, 2005 House Tarefa”, 2007 O Homem Que Desafiou o Diabo, 2006-2007 of Sand, 2004 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 2002 “Os “Vidas Opostas” (75 episodes), 2006 Cheating in Chains, 2005 Normais”, and 2002 City of God. Cafundó, 2005 “Mano a Mano”, 2004 “A ALICE BRAGA… Diarista”, 2003 “Casseta Angélica (April 15, & Planeta Urgente”, 2003 1983, São Paulo, Brazil) O Corneteiro Lopes, 2002 has 21 acting credits, “Cidade dos Homens”, among them 2012 On 2002 City of God, and the Road (completed), 2000 “Brava Gente.” 2011 The Rite, 2010 Predators Motion PHELLIPE HAAGENSEN… Comics: Moment of Bené – Benny (1984, Rio Extraction, 2010 de Janeiro, Brazil) has 11 Predators, 2010 Repo acting credits: 2010 Men, 2009 Crossing “Força-Tarefa”, 2010 A Over, 2008 Blindness, Thousand Pardons, 2008 2008 , 2007 I Am Plastic City, 2008 “Casos Legend, 2007 The Milky e Acasos”, 2008 Máncora, 2006-2007 “Vidas Opostas” (51 Way, 2006 Journey to the End of the Night, 2006 Only God episodes), 2006 Sonhos de Peixe, 2002-2004 “Cidade dos Knows, 2005 Lower City, 2002 City of God, and 1998 Homens” (9 episodes), 2004 Brothers in Faith, 2002 City of God, Trampolim/ and 2000 “Brava Gente.” ROBERTA RODRIGUES… Berenice – Bernice has 25 acting DOUGLAS SILVA… Dadinho - Li'l Dice (1988 in Rio de Janeiro, credits: 2011 “Insensato Coração” (14 episodes), 2011 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) has 12 acting credits: 2010 “Os Desenrola, 2010 “As Cariocas”, 2010 5 x , Now by Gozadores”, 2010 “Aventuras do Didi”, 2009 “India - A Love Ourselves, 2008-2009 “Três Irmãs” (92 episodes), 2008 If Story” (43 episodes), 2008 , 2008 Blindness, 2007 Nothing Else Works Out, 2008 “Casos e Acasos”, 2007 “Faça “Toma Lá, Dá Cá”, 2007 , 2007 “Carga Pesada”, Sua História”, 2007 “Dicas de um Sedutor”, 2007 “Paraíso 2002-2005 “Cidade dos Homens” (19 episodes), 2002 “Sítio do Tropical” (87 episodes), 2005-2007 “Tecendo o Saber” (39 Pica-Pau Amarelo”, 2002 City of God, and 2000 “Brava Gente.” episodes), 2006 Noel: The Samba Poet, 2006 “Páginas da vida”, 2006 “Sob Nova Direção”, 2006 Mulheres do Brasil, 2006 JONATHAN HAAGENSEN… Cabeleira – Shaggy (February 23, “Filhos do Carnaval”, 2006 “JK”, 2006 Desejo, 2002-2005 1983, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) has 15 acting “Cidade dos Homens” (7 episodes), 2005 “” (8 credits: 2010 Bróder, 2009 Embarque Imediato, 2008 “Os episodes), 2004 O Diabo a Quatro, 2004 “Cabocla” (23 Mutantes”, 2007 “Paraíso Tropical” (105 episodes), 2007 City of episodes), 2003 “”, 2003 Garrincha: Men, 2006 Noel: The Samba Poet, 2006 The Passenger: Adult Lonely Star, and 2002 City of God. Secrets, 2006 “Sob Nova Direção”, 2002-2005 “Cidade dos Homens” (8 episodes), 2004 O Diabo a Quatro, 2004 “A Fernando Meirelles (from Wikipedia) Diarista”, 2004 “Da Cor do Pecado” (24 episodes), 2002 Seja o Meirelles' father, José de Souza Meirelles, is a gastroenterologist Que Deus Quiser, 2002 City of God, and 2000 “Brava Gente.” who travelled regularly to Asia and North America (among other regions of the world), which gave opportunities for Fernando to MATHEUS NACHTERGAELE… Sandro Cenoura – Carrot have contact with different cultures and places. His mother, (January 3, 1969, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil) has 41 acting Sônia Junqueira Ferreira Meirelles, is daughter of farmers and credits, some of which are 2010 “S.O.S. Emergência”, 2010 O worked with landscape architecture and interior design for a long Bem Amado, 2008-2009 “Ó Paí, Ó”, 2008 La virgen negra, 2008 time. Second youngest of four children, he saw his older brother, Meirelles—CITY OF GOD—3

José Marcos, die in a car-bike accident when he was only 4 years film. The filming was done with a professional crew. The film old. His two sisters, Márcia and Silvinha, graduated in theater was a national and international success. and psychology, respectively. Fernando grew up in Alto dos In 2004, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Pinheiros, district of the West Zone of São Paulo, and spending Best Director for City of God. Also, at the 2004 Cannes Film every vacation in farms from both sides of his parents. "Even I Festival, the movie received four nominations: Best Director, have a farm. I don't know why I bought it," he says. Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Photography and Best Editing. With the recognition, he was offered a job in Hollywood. With The Constant Gardener, he again received critical acclaim, receiving several nominations, including for four Academy Awards and the Golden Globe Award for Best Director. Rachel Weisz went on tho win the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Meirelles insisted that the soundtrack be based on the music of African countries, and most of the filming was done in Kenya. In 2007, he began shooting Blindness, a film adaptation of Nobel-prize winner José Saramago's book, Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira. The film, which was released in 2008, was the opening film of the Cannes Film Festival.

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian (2 January 2003): His first experience with cinema was with his father, This electrifying picture is part tender coming-of-age film and who often directed 8 mm during his job at the university. part gang-warfare epic from the Brazilian slum, or favela, told Mostly western and thriller parodies, he used his relatives and from the viewpoint of the children who manage to be both its friends as actors. At 11, in 1967, he spent a year in the United underclass and its criminal overlords. It's a movie with all the States, precisely in , where he got in touch with the dials cranked up to 11, an overwhelming, intoxicating assault on hippie movement, which impressed him. At 13, with a borrowed the senses, and a thriller so tense that you might have the red seat Super 8 camera, Meirelles started producing small films, plush in front of you - or even some unfortunate's hair - gripped encouraged by Norman McLaren's animations. in both fists. He studied at the School of Architecture and Urban Amores Perros - increasingly the touchstone of the Planning at the University of São Paulo during the 1980s. His Latin new wave - began with a car chase and a dead animal. graduation work was done in the form of a film, instead of the Director Fernando Meirelles's City of God, co-produced under traditional designs of the other students: he went to Japan and the aegis of , has something similar, but invests his bought professional video equipment to do the job. He presented images with more overtly mythic qualities, irresistibly potent it and graduated with the minimum acceptable grade. When studying architecture at the University of São Paulo, Meirelles became involved in experimental film-making. After several years in independent television, he became an advertisement film director. He is still one of the partners of O2 Filmes, the biggest Brazilian advertisement firm, which has produced City of God, Domésticas (Maids) and Viva Voz. Along with four friends (Paul Morelli, Marcelo Machado, Dário Vizeu and Bob Salatini), Meirelles began his career with experimental films. Eventually, they formed an independent production company Olhar Eletrônico. Subsequently, new friends joined the group: Renato Barbiere, Agilson Araujo, Toniko and Marcelo Tas. In 1982 the company aired TV programs on current affairs, as well as the children series Castelo Rá-Tim-Bum (Ra- Tim-Bum Castle), with 180 episodes. In addition to obtaining from the very beginning. A swaggering is about to high ratings, they also introduced a refreshing humorous slaughter a chicken in the middle of the favela; it escapes, and informality in news reporting. there is a hilarious but still oddly gripping chase sequence as the By the end of the 1980s, he became increasingly bird makes its bid for freedom. interested on the advertising market. In 1990, Meirelles and As it exits an alley and scampers into the nearest the friends closed down Olhar Eletrônico, opening an advertising place has to a main thoroughfare, the chicken, with a hundred business, O2 Films. One decade was enough for him to become bullets and cleavers with its name on it, finds itself face to face one of the most important and sought-after advertising producers. with the movie's leading character, 18-year-old Rocket In 1997, Meirelles read the book Paulo Lins's City of (Alexandre Rodrigues), who has every reason to think he is God. He decided to adapt it to film, which was done in 2002, and going to be murdered. Behind Rocket appear a number of law- decided that the actors in it would be selected among the enforcement officers in armoured vehicles making one of their inhabitants of slums. In a final triage, from 400 children, they periodic terrified and ineffective forays into the 'hood; in front of selected 200, with whom they worked for the shooting of the him, the gangster and his courtiers all produce weapons. A Meirelles—CITY OF GOD—4 wacky, black-comic interlude has morphed with appalling speed Meirelles's storytelling rushes forward at a full, into a potential bloodbath. breathless tilt, swerving, accelerating, doubling back on itself, The sacrificial purpose of the chicken conveys with the amplifying the roles and experiences of incidental characters. A force of a blunt instrument how cheap life has come to be in the bravura narrative moment reveals itself when he discloses the ghetto, and how victimhood and aggression have become fused history of one single apartment, showing how it becomes together. The wiseguys, their cowering subordinates, their stoic degraded and denatured as it ceases to be a family home and womenfolk and the dead bodies around them are all chickens - becomes a drug-dealer's den. Meirelles's film flashes and sweeps and they are mostly all children. around you, dizzying, disorientating, intoxicating. Never before have criminals looked so young: pre- His mastery of his material consists not merely in the pubescent, in fact. The City of God is like one vast, dysfunctional adaptation of Paulo Lins's novel, but a direct engagement with family, neighbours from hell with no the ghetto itself, and his neighbours, with no parents or triumphant recruitment of a concerned adults. It is a cross between veritable army of non- an orphanage and an abattoir. professionals is the result of The movie tells the story of an almost military raid on this this slum, a grim housing project for dangerous territory. This is the poor, from the late 1960s to the something that combines early 1980s; it tracks the story of both film-making with oral Rocket, a would-be press history. It is a compelling photographer (and a character whose piece of work. purpose is probably to ventriloquise the sensibility of Paulo Lins, on whose Roger Ebert (24 January novel the film is based), and Li'l Dice, 2003): who follows his gangster vocation "City of God" with the passionate severity of a monk churns with furious energy as - the latter renaming himself, having it plunges into the story of the notionally grown to man's estate, as Li'l Ze (Leandro Firmino da slum gangs of Rio de Janeiro. Breathtaking and terrifying, Hora). urgently involved with its characters, it announces a new director Crime and football are traditionally the ways out of the of great gifts and passions: Fernando Meirelles. Remember the ghetto, and Meirelles raises this second option only to obliterate name. The film has been compared with Scorsese's it. A bunch of kids gather round to play keepy-uppy; but this is "GoodFellas," and it deserves the comparison. Scorsese's film abandoned when three hoodlums rush on to the pitch, seeking began with a narrator who said that for as long as he could refuge from the police - and football, the commodity in which remember he wanted to be a gangster. The narrator of this film Brazil is an unquestioned superpower, is never mentioned again. seems to have had no other choice. What is left is the great game of violence, of intimidation and The movie takes place in slums constructed by Rio to rape, of abject gang loyalty for children for whom the ties of isolate the poor people from the city center. They have grown family, church or nationhood are meaningless jokes: seething into places teeming with life, color, music and excitement--and with rage, resentment and collectively enacting one continuous, also with danger, for the law is absent and violent gangs rule the unending scattered act of pre-emptive revenge. streets. In the virtuoso sequence opening the picture, a gang is The favela known as the City of God has been described holding a picnic for its members when a chicken escapes. Among as the film's chief "character", and as a location it looks those chasing it is Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), the narrator. unglamorously real in a way that cannot be approximated by set He suddenly finds himself between two armed lines: the gang on design. There are some scenes at the beach, but the familiar one side, the cops on the other. world of Rio is light years away. At first glance, the dreary rows As the camera whirls around him, the background of jerry-built sheds in the middle of nowhere look very much like changes and Rocket shrinks from a teenager into a small boy, sheds for factory-farmed animals, or an encampment for refugees playing soccer in a housing development outside Rio. To or prisoners of war. It is seen in broad daylight, at night, and at understand his story, he says, we have to go back to the one stage in a glowing crimson sunset. But nothing alleviates its beginning, when he and his friends formed the Tender Trio and grimness and inhumanity - at the very best it resembles a began their lives of what some would call crime and others purpose-built suburb of poverty. would call survival. Crime has, in a nauseous reversal of liberal social The technique of that shot--the whirling camera, the thinking, almost been "designed into" the City of God, but any flashback, the change in colors from the dark brightness of the foreseeable conventional breakdown of law and order has slum to the dusty sunny browns of the soccer field--alert us to a evolved one or two steps further into the corruption and movie that is visually alive and inventive as few films are. degradation of children. Li'l Dice, a tiny kid, plans a staggeringly Meirelles began as a director of TV commercials, which audacious hold-up of a brothel, but in a fit of pique at being gave him a command of technique—and, he says, trained him to relegated to the status of lookout by his older comrades, returns work quickly, to size up a shot and get it, and move on. Working to the scene of the crime to murder every single innocent with the cinematographer Cesar Charlone, he uses quick-cutting customer and employee of the "motel" - it is a truly chilling and a mobile, hand-held camera to tell his story with the haste moment of unalloyed evil. and detail it deserves. Sometimes those devices can create a film Meirelles—CITY OF GOD—5 that is merely busy, but "City of God" feels like sight itself, as The movie is based on a novel by Paulo Lins, who grew we look here and then there, with danger or opportunity up in the City of God, somehow escaped it, and spent eight years everywhere. writing his book. A note at the end says it is partly based on the The gangs have money and guns because they sell drugs life of Wilson Rodriguez, a Brazilian photographer. We watch as and commit robberies. But they are not very rich because their Rocket obtains a (stolen) camera that he treasures and takes activities are limited to the City of God, where no one has much pictures from his privileged position as a kid on the streets. He money. In an early crime, we see the stickup of a truck carrying gets a job as an assistant on a newspaper delivery truck, asks a cans of propane gas, which the crooks sell to homeowners. Later photographer to develop his film, and is startled to see his there is a raid on a bordello, where the customers are deprived of portrait of an armed gang leader on the front page of the paper. their wallets. (In a flashback, we see that raid a second time, and "This is my death sentence," he thinks, but no: The understand in a chilling moment why there were dead bodies at a gangs are delighted by the publicity and pose for him with their site where there was not supposed to be any killing.) As Rocket guns and girls. And during a vicious gang war, he is able to narrates the lore of the district he knows so well, we understand photograph the cops killing a gangster--a murder they plan to that poverty has undermined all social structures in the City of pass off as gang-related. That these events throb with immediate God, including the family. The gangs provide structure and truth is indicated by the fact that Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the status. Because the gang death rate is so high, even the leaders newly elected president of Brazil, actually reviewed and praised tend to be surprisingly young, and life has no value except when "City of God" as a needful call for change. you are taking it. There is an astonishing sequence when a In its actual level of violence, "City of God" is less victorious gang leader is killed in a way he least expects, by the extreme than Scorsese's "Gangs of New York," but the two films last person he would have expected, and we see that essentially have certain parallels. In both films, there are really two cities: he has been killed not by a person but by the culture of crime. the city of the employed and secure, who are served by law and Yet the film is not all grim and violent. Rocket also municipal services, and the city of the castaways, whose captures some of the Dickensian flavor of the City of God, where alliances are born of opportunity and desperation. Those who live a riot of life provides ready-made characters with nicknames, beneath rarely have their stories told. personas and trademarks. Some like Benny (Phelipe Haagensen) "City of God" does not exploit or condescend, does not are so charismatic they almost seem to transcend the usual rules. pump up its stories for contrived effect, does not contain silly and Others, like Knockout Ned and Lil Ze, grow from kids into reassuring romantic sidebars, but simply looks, with a fearsome leaders, their words enforced by death. passionately knowing eye, at what it knows.

ONE MORE IN THE SPRING 2012 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXIV Apr 24 Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight 2008

CONTACTS: ...email Diane Christian: [email protected]…email Bruce Jackson [email protected] ….for the series schedule, annotations, links, handouts (in color) and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com ...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send either of us an email with add to BFS list in the subject line.

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center and State University of New York at Buffalo With support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News

Color versions of the Goldenrod Handouts are online at the BFS website.