Translator: Dirce Guimaraes Pacheco Reviewer: Genesis Quijije
Hi, everyone. Good afternoon.
OK, I'll start this talk by saying something about myself.
I live in Grajaú.
For those who aren't familiar or aren't from Rio,
it's a neighborhood in the north
between Andaraí and Vila Isabel,
in the area known as Grande Tijuca.
I've always lived there.
Most of my life, I've lived on the same street. My parents are still there.
It's where my grandparents came to live when they arrived in Rio in 1959.
I studied in the area and my parents worked nearby.
It was convenient for us this way, to have everything nearby.
Then, when I went to college and chose to study Communications at UFRJ,
my parents had quite a hard time.
At that time, my father asked me: "Why don't you go to UERJ?
It's closer. If there's any problem, I can get there in 10 minutes."
I suppose dads can get anywhere in 10 minutes
whenever something happens.
Urca, which is 15 minutes away from Grajaú, was too far.
I thought that was the typical attitude of the neighborhood,
because Grajaú is a residential neighborhood, with many elderly residents,
it's somewhat like that in the interior, it's somewhat provincial.
But I was really disappointed when I started at UFRJ
and found that same kind of attitude.
At UFRJ, people also had a limited concept
about the city and what it offers in terms of art, culture, and entertainment.
For those who were there, the northern area was too far.
To experience culture, you have to go downtown or to the south,
as if the city's border ended at the Rebouças tunnel.
This way of thinking is reinforced by newspapers in their culture sections.
Of course, it's reinforced because they're all written by, for example,
people who have studied Communications at UFRJ.
The north only gets attention because of street potholes or sewage leaks.
Baixada Fluminense is only mentioned because of violence.
Google "Baixada Fluminense" and see if anything positive comes up.
To know about anything besides that, you have to go against the flow.
And to make anything different, you have to make even more of an effort.
Little by little, I met people who go against the flow together,
and do really cool things in these places I was told to avoid
because of its trash, sewage, and violence.
I've come today to talk to you about these people,
people who don't accept this "official" view of the culture in Rio,
the one we see on the news and the one shown in soap operas.
These people create the most transformative
and creative forces in our city,
and also the most powerful in integrating Rio de Janeiro.
They're artists, cultural producers,
who organize themselves in groups and make things happen in Rio,
although they aren't that well known.
Their platform is the street,
and they understand that affection, strife, the city, love, and collaboration
have to be unified in order to spread culture
with the main purpose of connecting people.
In a city full of misconceptions,
permeated by talk about wants and needs,
they go against the grain and say: "No! We are, we have, and we can."
To make it clearer for you, I'll introduce you to some of these groups.
This one is CIAB, Benfica's Artistic Integration Group.
It's formed by artists from Benfica, Mangueira,
São Cristóvão, Manguinhos, Jacarezinho,
who want to get together to become more visible in that area.
Virgílio dos Santos, the guy with the small guitar,
is the one who organizes Benfica's Samba Party twice a month,
and he says we need to bring the suburbs into the mainstream
so it can be seen and explored in Rio de Janeiro.
Similarly along the same lines is "Perto do Leão Etíope do Méier",
which is a group that wants to decentralize cultural events in the city
and highlight new kinds of music and artists.
They attract people of all ages to the events they organize,
which are totally free,
at Agripino Grieco Square, in Méier, at the beginning of Dias da Cruz street.
There are the people from the Papagoiaba Agency,
young people from São Gonçalo who created an agency
to promote sociocultural power from the south of Rio.
They want to change the pejorative meaning of "papagoiaba,"
a nickname for those who aren't born in the capital city,
and to promote the great things made in São Gonçalo, Rio Bonito,
Tanguá, Niterói.
They interview people with interesting projects in the area
and also produce videos about remarkable local cultural initiatives,
like the Skateboarding Meeting, which happens in São Gonçalo,
the Tradition of the Salt Carpets in Corpus Christi, etc.
If we take a look at Baixada Fluminense,
that "far away, violent place",
we find many projects like these.
Baixada Fluminense is a cauldron bubbling with creativity.
This is the Donana Cultural Center, the birthplace of reggae,
a backyard in Belford Roxo, a place full of life:
they have poetry readings, capoeira shows, film exhibitions, and so on.
There's a film exhibition this Sunday. You can find me there...
This is Roque Pense.
It's a group of girls who want to strengthen
the female rock scene in Baixada.
They organize an anti-sexism rock festival.
It takes place in Mesquita.
Cypher on the Street is a hip hop event held every month
at Pacificador Square, in Duque de Caxias.
Macaco Chinês is an audiovisual group
also from Duque de Caxias.
Capa Comics is a really creative group that likes comics.
They were tired of seeing only American superheroes,
villains destroying only New York or Tokyo.
So, they created the first comics
that take place in Baixada Fluminense,
and show the daily life of the characters, of course.
They are here today. I've already bought my comics.
I recommend that you too read Capa Comics.
These guys are Pirão Discs,
a group of friends that set up an independent music label
for musicians from Baixada.
They want to publicize and promote what they call "new MPB,"
Popular Music of Baixada.
That is the group Mate com Angu.
Mate com Angu is a movie club, also from Caxias,
it's been running for 12 years,
and throughout the years they've been doing much more
than just showing movies,
which attract around 500 people on special days.
They also produce their own movies
and hold audiovisual workshops in the city.
I could talk on and on about initiatives like these.
But we don't have much time here.
I'm going to tell you the story of Buraco do Getúlio,
a film club from Nova Iguaçu, which has just celebrated its 8th anniversary.
The name "Buraco", "hollow", comes from its location, near "Getúlio Hollow,"
an underground passage that joins the two parts of Nova Iguaçu,
which are separated by the railway.
Close to Getúlio's Hollow is Ananias' Bar.
When it's a movie night organized by Buraco,
the bar becomes a dance floor, movie theater, and stage.
Nova Iguaçu is huge, with more than 1 million inhabitants,
but it has only 3 movie theaters, which are inside a mall.
Buraco do Getúlio was created in 2006
to offer different kinds of movies to the local population.
They say that being in Baixada
can't prevent them watching the movies shown at Estação Botafogo.
Estação Botafogo is a movie theater here in the southern area,
where alternative movies are shown.
So...
Over these last 8 years,
Buraco has become more than just a place to show movies.
In the 167 sessions that have been shown,
they showed 461 movies
and they also have an open space which has held 287 artistic events
for poets, musicians, and local actors.
All of that for free, at a bar in downtown Nova Iguaçu,
okay?
I'm only talking about free events.
So far, the people who work at Buraco -
currently 9 people are in charge, residents of Nova Iguaçu -
have produced everything with their own money,
which happens in nearly all these groups
that I'm telling you about.
Last month, they decided to hold a fundraising campaign
on the Internet, and got around R$ 10,000
to promote their activities for the second semester of 2014.
That is, six months' cost at Getúlio's Hollow is around R$ 10,000,
which, I think you may agree with me, is quite cheap
to do all of that and bring life to this part of the city.
If they are able to do that with such little money in Nova Iguaçu,
let alone if they could have more,
or if they were included in cultural public policies
that recognized the importance of this kind of project.
Another group that makes a lot of things happen in the city,
with little money is CCRP,
the Circuit of Poetry and Rhythm of Rio.
The group started here, downtown, at Fundição Progresso,
in a place called CIC, the Interactive Circus Center.
CIC was a big "hot spot" for hip-hop culture in the city.
Rappers, rhymers, and graffiti artists from all over the city joined there
for rhyming events.
But then, CIC caught fire, and as the space didn't exist anymore,
these guys started to rhyme on the streets.
Slowly, other artistic activities involved rhyming
and it spread all over the city.
Now, these cultural events from CCRP happen downtown, in Botafogo,
Bangu, Freguesia, Manguinhos, Recreio, Vila Isabel, and Méier
every other day of the week.
For example, the Méier Cultural Circle takes place on Wednesdays
and attracts up to 250 people, in the middle of the week,
and it happens "out of love."
Alan, one of the producers, told me that.
He said that the money for the production of the event
comes from the beverages they take with them to be sold,
and donations given by the customers of the event,
so everyone contributes the way they can.
These events have happened for many years in the city,
with regular weekly events, they attract hundreds of people,
they are one of the main places that foment hip-hop culture in Rio
and all of that happens "out of love."
Can you imagine if they could have even more money?
Finally, I'd like to talk about Norte Comum,
a group that presents a much wider proposal.
This group was formed by a Facebook group.
Some friends created a Facebook group
because they wanted to understand why you need to go downtown
or to the south to experience the culture of Rio.
In one month, more than 700 people joined the group
and started working hard and developed a lot of things.
During those three years,
they created a new cultural agenda for the northern area.
Among the many events they produced,
I can list off Sarau TropiChaos, which occurs in Engenho de Dentro;
Amostra Grátis, Geringonça, and Aperte F5, in Tijuca;
Ágoras Cariocas, whose events take place in public squares
where a teacher talks about the history and pop culture of the neigborhoods,
so people can learn about its history. It happens in many neighborhoods.
Then there's music, barbecues...
And so on.
Norte Comum talks about the same topic
that Buraco do Getúlio and other groups promote.
How can political policies modernize
so that they recognize these new forms of cultural expression and creativity?
They say they aren't sure if it's worth making them official
because they can't fit their collectives
into the traditional legislation format.
So, how can we create a market, a government, and a city
that, instead of creating obstacles for these initiatives,
can promote these groups that integrate the city and its artists?
I've known most of these groups from the Cultural Map of Rio de Janeiro,
a project by the Secretary of State for Culture,
created by Diadorim Ideas, which I was pleased to be a part of.
A story that I'd like to share with you,
from my production experience at Mapa,
occured at the very beginning, when we were getting in touch
with cultural producers and managers
from the 92 counties of Rio de Janeiro,
a Secretary of Culture told me: "Oh, no way. There's nothing good here."
A Secretary of Culture of a Fluminense city, saying:
"There's nothing good here!"
I was shocked,
but unfortunately that is a common belief
which doesn't only exist in the countryside.
Her words reflect a thought
that undervalues certain cultural movements
based on the places they come from.
I don't know if you've seen a video on the internet a while ago
of a famous violinist
that experimented by playing in a subway station.
It was Joshua Bell, one of today's best violinists.
His shows are always packed, his tickets are expensive.
But, when he was in a subway station in Washington,
he didn't draw a lot of attention.
He played for 45 minutes and earned US$ 32.
Why did changing his setting make him invisible?
This example is quite similar to what happens in Rio nowadays.
Many people act as if certain places or individuals
are culturally devoid.
How many times do we normalize this way of thinking?
"If it's from the streets, it's bad."
"If it's from a favela or the suburbs, it's bad."
We often see a newspaper or magazine cover
saying things like "the decline of culture,"
"the squalor of culture," and other nonsense like that.
That is definitely not what I see in Rio nowadays.
I see a large number of people who bring to our streets,
to our squares, our bars,
good movies, good music, and also good ideas.
We have to talk about these people and know about their projects.
It's obvious that there are many obstacles
that prevent us from learning about the other side of culture in Rio.
Public transport is one of them.
Try coming back home from Nova Iguaçu at 3 a.m.,
which is around the time when Buraco do Getúlio ends its events.
It's not an easy task for anybody.
In fact, you don't come back. You wait for a bus to show up.
There aren't even taxis, guys! There are no taxis, none!
It's a problem, clearly it's a huge problem,
but there are others that residents in Rio experience without complaints.
We think it's OK to buy an expensive ticket
to watch a certain artist,
or spend hours in line to get the ticket.
Rio is full of people
who think New York is right around the corner.
However, "Nova Iguaçu is too far away, right?"
But the biggest barrier isn't that.
The geographical barrier seems so challening
because it's sustained by an imaginary barrier.
Heraldo HB, one of the founders of Mate com Angu,
the 12-year-old film club, in Caxias,
says that when Mate's events started to become successful
among the students here in Rio,
people went there and praised it, saying things like:
"Wow, this is so cool. It doesn't feel like we're in Caxias."
(Laughter)
Even though he was there, the guy still denied that Caxias
is a place of cultural creativity.
They are fighting against this stereotype
but without romanticizing their communities.
Heraldo himself says: "Caxias is boring. Caxias is a difficult place.
But it is also completely cinematic."
The biggest barrier isn't the distance, the lack of time or security.
The biggest barrier is interest
because distance is also a matter of interest, of desire.
With these groups, I've made myself become more open
to meeting other people from Rio,
and I've come here to invite you to do the same.
What's far for you?
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)