City of God
A view from the underworld

Courtesy of miramax.com

by Suan Pineda
Adelante Associate Editor

CITY OF GOD Showing at Ragtag from April 23 -29. Call (573) 441-8504 for show times. www.adelanteonline.com

Suddenly, he understood it all with his heart in his throat and his body immobile. It happened so quickly. Within his first few steps on the soil of the slums, a child came up from behind and pointed a revolver at him. In that moment, he visualized what would come to be the biggest cinematic project in Brazil. For years he had heard of this place, but only then could he see with clarity the “City of God.”
In the film that influenced the lives of scores of Brazilian children, the politics of a president and the conscience of a country, director Fernando Meirelles brought to light a world forgotten in obscurity.
Based on the novel of the same title by Paulo Lins, “City of God” played an important part in the presidential campaign of Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva.
“It opened people’s eyes,” said Katia Lund, co-director. “It helped people to see the magnitude of this problem, the emergency of this problem.” The film had an enormous impact on the understanding of a harsh reality.
“The problem of violence and the slums is too large and difficult to solve just like that,” said Rubens Ewald Filho, one of the most important film critics in Brazil. “That kind of thing is not easily beaten. But at least the crime has a face.”
The film is based on the true story of a housing project constructed in the 1960s outside of Rio, ironically named “City of God.” Twenty years of gangs, drugs, assassins and child criminals are revealed through the eyes of Rocket, the protagonist.
Although it wasn’t recognized by an Oscar nomination, the biggest achievement of “City of God” went beyond its cinematic impact. The film was a stepping-stone for the young actors to pass into “official” society, Lund said.
“The film opened their minds to another type of world, a completely different social level.”
To capture the reality of the favelas, or slums, Meirelles and Lund decided to recruit novice actors from the poor barrios of Rio. Raw life experience took the place of acting experience, making them the perfect candidates.
But the filmmakers’ chief concern – even above the success of the film – was the destiny of the actors after the filming. “Nos do Cinema (We in the Movies)”, a small theater school, was the answer to these worries. The school was originally created to train the actors during the shooting of the film, but it has converted into a type of nonprofit organization. The students have produced two short films, “Bathroom,” and “Citizen Silva,” which won a Brazilian film festival award. Both films are presented and discussed in more well-to-do schools.
“They control their own budget and make their own decisions,” Lund said with pride. “They are their own agents.”
“City of God” was the pinch that the middle and upper classes needed to wake them from their golden dream to see the decay of their country. Brazil has one of the worst distributions of wealth in the world, with the richest 20 percent living on 60 percent of the country’s resources. But the scenario presented in “City of God” is only a microcosm of a universal problem: social justice.
“The problem we see in ‘City of God’ is not only the result of the politics of Brazil but of the whole world,” Lund said.
It’s a world fed by stereotypes, ignorant of the bitter reality of the global underclass – a world we can no longer afford to ignore.
“This is us,” she said simply. “This is part of our body.”