Tässä tekstiä poikkeuksellisesti englanniksi, koska postitin sen ensin eräälle meililistalle, laiskuus kunniaan :)


Have you seen the movie: Cidade de Deus?
 
What did you like?



After the movie was published, a Rapper MV Bill who lives in Cidade de Deus favela in Rio de Janeiro received tens of journalists who asked this questions from Bill. He asked back the same questions from the Journalists:
 
Have you seen the movie?
-Yes
What did you like?
-Very violent.
Would you hire somebody who lives in "Cidade de Deus"?
-No
Why not?
-I'm scared.
 
 
The image of favelas, that I got from the film was quite persistent, I didn't have any better source of information since I had never visited any favela. I kind of "believed" in the film since it was a Brazilian production and based on a true story.

Last week in Salvador I took a bus and visited the favela of Engenho Velho da Federacao. I saw people, kids and adults, lot's of them on the streets, coming and going, working, playing, shopping food, having conversations, all normal. Everybody that I talked liked to help me. Yes the poverty was visible, but I didn't see anybody with guns or smoking crack.

On the next day I went back and found the person that I was looking for, he told me that I shouldn't have gone alone to the favela, that I risked too much, that there is live war going on between the drug dealers, that just week ago they killed two persons next to his house...
 
I was very confused with the two different images of favelas that I had in my mind now, the one that I got trough my own experience and the one that comes from the media, movies and other peoples talks. I bought a book "Favela - Alegria e dor na cidade", it's in that book where I found the interesting comment of the rapper MV Bill about the movie "Cidade de Deus".

The book was excellent, once I started to reed I couldn't stop before I finnished the whole story.

So finally: Cidade de Deus, is that Brazil?