Life in the streets of Rio de Janeiro

Choosing what to watch online requires commitment. You can't just sit there and zap with your remote. You have to actually choose what to watch and you have so much to choose from. But I am slowly making more rational choices and finding out where the good content is. I've always loved documentaries and the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam is certainly a place I recommend. I was there once to watch Falluja by Nick Broomfield.

Anyway I've come across IDFA TV and you can actually watch documetaries online. It's a Vimeo channel embedded in the page

Here is the link

I watched On the Street by Sérgio Bloch (57 min) and it was time well spent. It's about how different characters managed to make a living out of their performances on the street of Rio de Janeiro. There are visual portraits of the performances, including a disabled man and a prostitute but what makes it even more interesting is that it shows the richness of street life in Brasil. The creativity of the people and the economic interaction that is taking place is something that hints at the vibrant development of the country and present the urban setting in a completely different fashion than the fictional film Tropa de Elite, a successful film that has become a sequel with Tropa de Elite 2 now showing in Europe.

Phoenix Litzsomania Brat Pack Mash up

A mash up video of films from the 1980's with Phoenix's song Litzsomania spurred a number of incredibly fresh videos from across the world. The original was taken down for copyright reasons, but you can still find it on You Tube with embedding disabled. (watch now) Brat Pack is a slang term, it refers to a group of actors from the 1980's making a number of films with at least two of the original Brat Packers. Some of these films from the 1980's are The Breakfast Club (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), The Outsiders, Class, Sixteeen Candles, Oxford Blues, etc. But in general brat pack refers to a group of successful people working in the same professional field.

Now a fresh contemporary take on this concept can be found in these videos. A group of friends having genuine fun.

Let's start with Brooklyin, New York.



Then follows San Francisco



Let's go to Europe now and see Amsterdam



The band Phoenix comes from Versailles, Paris. I like the span of generations in this one



The one from Riga is introducing us to another corner of Europe



But let's go Brasil now, Rio de Janeiro has some amazing views. It's so colourful and warm



And let's finish with Boston, hoping to find some more mash ups from different parts of the world. London, Barcelona, Turin...



And let me end by thanking Lawrence Lessig for letting me know about this. Let's keep the internet free and let copyright control understand this. Share culture.

Tropa de Elite

Check out this film about the violent favelas in Rio de Janeiro where a group of armed police (Bope) fights a war with the drug dealers. Discipline and Punish by French philosopher Michel Foucault is also mentioned. It's a film that shouldn't be celebrated for its violence but for what it triggers on your ideas on chaos and order.