5x Favela, Now By Ourselves

Special holiday discount: $20 tickets for everyone!

5x Favela is composed of five short films all written, directed, and acted by promising artists from the favelas of Brazil’s Rio. The culmination of a years-long project to cultivate talented young filmmakers from the favelas (slums), 5x Favela’s well-crafted episodes offer a rare glimpse of the dynamic culture emerging from these communities, debunking the popular myth that favelas are merely hotbeds of drugs and violence. 5x Favela includes:

Source of Income
 (Manaíra Carneiro, Wagner Novais)
A young man fulfils his dream to go to Law University, but is faced with difficulties paying for his expenses in terms of books and transportation. He feels tempted to sell drugs to his friends at university, thus raising the money to fund his studies.

Rice and Beans (Cacau Amaral, Rodrigo Felha)
Wesley, a young boy, listens to a confession by his father: he is tired of the household menu, always consisting of a plate filled with rice and stewed beans. The boy, joined by his friend Orelha, decides to find some money to buy a chicken.

Concert for Violin (Luciano Vidigal)
The children Márcia, Jota and Ademir vow to remain friends forever. Later, in their adulthood, Jota is involved in drug trafficking while Ademir has joined the police force. If the two are brought against each other, Márcia may be prevented from fulfilling her dream to play the violin.

Let It Fly
 (Cadu Barcellos)
Flávio lets his friend’s kite fall across the other quarter of the favela, which is run by a rival gang. Even though he is aware of the prohibition, Flávio decides to collect the kite.

Let There Be Light
 (Luciana Bezerra)
On Christmas Eve, the shanty town hill has been out of power for three days. The engineers who have been sent over by the power utility company have not managed to fix the problem. The residents kidnap one of the engineers, taking him as a hostage until the light supply is restored.

About Beatriz Azevedo
Beatriz Azevedo is a singer-songwriter based in São Paulo who has emerged in recent years as one of Brazil's most innovative artists. She has collaborated with leading Brazilian musicians such as Tom Zé, José Miguel Wisnik, and Vinícius Cantuária, as well as with renowned theater director José Celso Martinez. Azevedo has released four CDs and has performed widely throughout Brazil, Europe and the United States. In addition to her career as a musician, she is a PhD candidate at the Universidade de São Paulo and writing a dissertation about Oswald de Andrade's “Anthropofagia” (1928).

About the Photography
A two-man exhibition of artworks created by Brazilian artist Andre Cypriano and US artist Cannon Hersey will round out the evening, with an exhibition on view during the post reception. This exhibition will include original works created by the two artists along with a new collaborative work by Cannon Hersey and Nefertiti Strong that integrates video form the Olinda Jazz festival in Recife, Brazil.