Austin Brat Pack

An awesome video by my best man Flavio Carvalhaes, Brazilian pirate, Ph.d. sociology candidate and now music video superstar. Parabéns meu malandro mineiro!

Top 10 Latin American Films of the Decade (2000-2010)

1. Amores Perros (Love’s a Bitch). Alejandro González Iñárritu. Mexico, 2000.

2. Cidade de Deus (City of God). Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund. Brazil, 2000.

3. Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens). Fabián Bielinsky. Argentina, 2000.

4. El Secreto de sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes). Juan José Campanella. Argentina, 2009.

5. Tropa da Elite 2 (The Elite Squad 2). José Padilha. Brazil, 2010.

Top 10 Brazilian Films of the Decade (2000-2010)

1. Cidade de Deus (City of God). 2002. Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund.

2. Tropa da Elite 2 (The Elite Squad 2). 2010. José Padilha.

3. Tropa da Elite (The Elite Squad). 2007. José Padilha.

4. Santiago. 2007. João Moreira Salles.

5. Casa de Areia (House of Sand). 2005. Andrucha Waddington.

Maradona Sings Brazilian National Anthem

It’s four years old, but this video makes me laugh every time.

City of Cranes

London as seen by crane operators in the sky.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/cityofcranes/

A City Made of Waste

How informal settlements in Tijuana, Mexico construct housing and infrastructure from the ‘waste’ of San Diego, USA.

Purepechas en Chicago

Un video corto mostrando como la comunidad Purepecha de Chicago lucha por conservar su cultura y idioma.

http://video.aol.co.uk/video-detail/un-grupo-de-indgenas-lucha-por-conservar-la-cultura-purpecha/3955662419

Debaixo do Viaduto

Here is a nifty 7-minute documentary by my good friend Fausto di Quarto.  It provides a glimpse into the emerging hip-hop scene in Belo Horizonte, Brazil’s third largest city.  Fausto shot most of his documentary under the Viaduto (Viaduct) Santa Tereza, one of the city’s historic landmarks.  In recent years, the Viaduto has been adopted by hip-hop fans and transformed into the most dynamic public space in Belo Horizonte.  Parabéns Fausto!

Top Ten Movies 2009

*click on title for link to trailer.

1. Santiago, 2006, João Moreira Salles, Brazil

2. Precious, 2009, Lee Daniels, US

3. O Contador de Historias, (The Storyteller), 2008, Luiz Villaça, Brazil

4. Okuribito, (Departures), 2008, Yojiro Takita, Japan

5. Once, 2007, John Carney, Ireland

Glauber Rocha

Not too long ago I saw Barravento (1962), one of Glauber Rocha’s premiere works, at Tempo Glauber, a cultural institute in Botafogo dedicated to the work of the celebrated Brazilian filmmaker. The institute, managed by Rocha’s sister and daughter, houses Rocha’s complete work, including films, texts, manuscripts, and drawings, and even has a quaint outdoor café on the second floor patio.

Rocha, regarded as one of Brazil’s most influential filmmakers, was the leader of Cinema Novo, a cinematic movement in the 1950s and 1960s that explored poverty in Brazil, in particular in the dry northeast and large cities. Among the most significant Cinema Nova films are Glauber Rocha’s Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (1964), Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s Vidas Secas (1963), Carlos “Cacá” Diegues’s A Grande Cidade (1966) and Joaquim Pedro de Andrade’s Macunaíma (1969).

In college, I saw Rocha’s Dragão da Maldade Contra o Santo Guerreiro (1969), most popularly known as Antônio das Mortes, and found it to be by far the most bewildering film I had ever seen. At the time, I wasn’t yet fluent in Portuguese and was fairly unfamiliar with Brazilian history and culture; I was okay with not being able to follow most of the film.

Having lived in Brazil for over a year and half, studied Portuguese for more than two years, and watched several dozen Brazilian films, I felt prepared and even looked forward to watching another Rocha film.