Favela on blast

Premier in Russia

Guns, drugs, sex and drums, Rio's on fire.

For 20 years, a subculture in Brazil has emerged under society's radar. Favela on Blast tells the stories of sex, love, poverty and pride for Rio's marginalized people. They have their own language, style, and heroes. It's a movie that's fast, heavy and violent like the city itself. This film is a flash of a few lives of charismatic people that relate to the funk music and a retelling of the subculture itself.

Favela on Blast shows the culture surrounding “Funk Carioca,” a musical rhythm that mixes the American electronic funk of the 1980’s with the most diverse influences of Brazilian music. It is one of the most interesting musical movements in the world, and it comes from one of the most violent and poorest places too: the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Bombastic rhythms coming from the Miami Bass and loops and samples are united to powerful rap vocal using Brazilian slang. This is music that is designed to be listened to as loud as possible and with high bass pumping through the tropical nights of Rio.

Wesley Pentz (Diplo), teamed up with Leandro HBL in 2005 to tell the story of the MC’s, DJ’s, dancers, and cultural producers who have spent their lives in the favela and are creating this vibrant scene.

Together, they visited 60 favelas and conducted more than 100 interviews in order to explore the culture that surrounds Funk Carioca. In doing so, they have created a portrait of a subculture that defines the youth of Rio’s dismissed population. It’s music that is crass, dirty, violent and loud – but regardless, it is the soundtrack of their lives.

Filmed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2005-2006
Language: Portuguese

Cast and Crew:
Directors: Leandro HBL & Wesley Pentz
Executive producers: Vania Catani, Leandro HBL & Wesley Pentz
Production director: Amiten
Cinematography: Leandro HBL
Editor: Ricardo Mehedff
Co_editor: Breno Fortes
Music: Wesley Pentz (Diplo)
Assistants: Humberto Cattabriga, Cristiano Lara & Cale
Still Photography: Rebekka Elhers
Production company: Mad Decent & Mosquito project
Co_Producer: Bananeira Filmes
Cast: MC Catra, Deise Tigrona, MC Leleco, Gaiola da Popozudas, DJ Sanny, MC
Colibri, MC Gorila, MC Preto, DJ Sany Pitbull, MC Duda, DJ Grandmaster Rafael,
DJ Carlos Machado, DJ Marlboro, DJ Sandrihno
80 min

http://www.maddecent.com/favelaonblast/

Kuduro, Fogo No Museke

Premier in Russia

Fogo No Museke (engl. Kuduro - Fire in the Neighbourhood) is a second film of the director Jorge Antonio from a triptych of documentaries about Angolan music. 
It’s all about the latest and only ‘made-in-Luanda’ music that grew out of the musseques, the crowded neighborhoods that sprung up during the war where cement block houses stand wall to wall, bursting with kids and restless youth – the new generation of Angola. The novo urban beat driving kurduro sounds like rap but is said to be a mixture of kizomba and techno, complete with its own dance movements. Kuduro is controversial and dynamic and has even been dubbed as the up-and -coming, hip new music on the international music scene.

*translations:

*kuduru literally means hard ass

*fogo literally means fire

*musseque  or museke – in some places called shantytowns, favelas, or ghettos but in Angola it’s the musseque

Director: Jorge Antonio, Portugal. 2007 60min

Kudoro was born in 1996 in Angola, created by Tony Amado, the Angolan's "Grandmaster Flash". Kuduro (Portuguese translation of « hard butt ») is a 100% Angolan production, totally electronic, composed by Angolans DJ's.

Kuduro in an electronic production made in Africa, a singular musical style that gathered traditional music and house with Brazilian, Caribbean and Latin vibes. Beats are a savant mix of programming inspired by Angolan's carnival traditional rhythms at 140Bpm (ancestor of the Brazilian Samba) and accelerated house music beats.From this base with unexpected arrangements, kuduristas put their protest texts (in Portuguese).
To go with those new rhythms, Tony Amado has also created a dance, at the same time hard, sensual and languid. This dance constitutes by itself a fascinating performance. 

Depending on where you live, since late 2006, 2007 or 2008 one of the tastier additions to your local breakbeat-friendly club's sound palette has no doubt been the Angolan genre of kuduro. In the slipstream of the Brazilian baile funk craze that initially paved the way for the pairing of shouty Portuguese raps with a hasty cut and paste approach to production, the fiery polyrhythmic bliss of kuduro took things to the next level in 2008.

Spearheading the movement was the track 'Sound of kuduro', a collaboration of Buraka Som Sistema, M.I.A. and Luanda luminaries DJ Znobia,  Puto Prata andSaborosa that combines the raw energy of the original African style with the more refined production standards of its progressive European offshoot. The aptly titled 'Luanda Lisboa', also a Buraka/Znobia collab, is another fine example of this particular fusion. Due to colonial ties Portugal has a large Angolan community in which kuduro music was able to blossom and evolve up to the point where it got picked up by some adventurous dj's who introduced it to a whole new - i.e. non-African - audience. While the genre was building up momentum in the Lisbon club scene inevitably word got out in bloggoland. Already boasting a couple of vinyl releases, a compilation cd and a firm live reputation local boys Buraka Som Sistema, named after a Lisbon suburb, in no time became a hot ticket anywhere in the world.

Program of International Kansk Video Festival

International Kansk Video Festival (Russia/Siberia) is not a conventional film festival. It is an experiment in time and space. The place…. the small Siberian city of Kansk, was found on the Internet by chance and selected as its name correlates with the Cannes Film Festival, Kansk in the Russian language is pronounced the same as Cannes. I grew as an artistic joke….Siberia having it’s own ‘Festival de Cannes’.
Since 2002 in the depths of Siberia the festival happens annually. Far way from the Co^te d\'Azur to the severe Taiga climate, 7000 km from London, 4500 km from Moscow and 300 km from Krasnoyarsk by ‘Irons Road’, and the Trans-Siberian Railway. In an area full of wonderful and brave Siberian people, pelmeni, cedar nuts, even buses reminiscent to the old school buses of a long lost Soviet a place full magic. The Kansk Video festival has grown immeasurably from it’s 2002 beginnings, each year it hosts an international jury from the industry and artistic communities, running international film and video-art competitions with a special screenings program and a bank of ideas for a further 150 years of the festivals future. The festival promotes new names of independent and uncompromising video and filmmakers.