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영어

In recent years there has been a boom of films about social exclusion and violence in Rio de Janeiro, a city that is a postcard of the socio-political contradictions plaguing Brazil. With this a new cadre of characters has emerged: the urban social activists associated with non-governmental organizations, or NGOs (or “ONGs” in Portuguese) who serve as a narrative link between viewers and the drug traffickers, prison inmates, street children, police, and residents of favelas portrayed in these films. This article focuses on the presence of these urban social activists and the organizations they represent to explore linkages between filmmaking, community activism, entertainment, and solidarity in three films set in Rio: Tropa de Elite (Padilha, 2007), Falcão: Meninos do Tráfico (MV Bill and Athayde, 2006), and Favela Rising (Zimbalist and Mochary, 2005). Laying out scholarly formulations for evaluating films about poverty in Brazil side by side with arguments about humanitarian activism not only draws attention to the dangers of superficiality in action and art for reinforcing oppression but also underscores the benefits of deep and persevering solidarity for working against it-in social activism, filmmaking, and other artistic and scholarly investigation.