Favela Rising is a 2005 documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 by American directors

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 Jeff Zimbalist

Jeff Zimbalist

Jeffrey Leib Nettler Zimbalist is an American filmmaker best known for his films Favela Rising, The Two Escobars, and The Scribe of Urabá....

 and Matt Mochary. It was produced by Sidetrack Films

Sidetrack Films

Sidetrack Films is a film production company based out of Brooklyn, New York formed by Ravi Anne in 2005. Since its formation many noteworthy and award winning documentaries and feature-length narrative films have been produced by the company.-Productions:...

 and VOY Pictures. It debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival

Tribeca Film Festival

The Tribeca Film Festival is a film festival founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff in a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the consequent loss of vitality in the TriBeCa neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.The mission of the festival...

 on April 24, 2005 where it won the award for Best New Documentary Filmmaker for Zimbalist and Mochary. The film's look at life in Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

's slums won it further awards such as Best Documentary Film from the New York Latino Film Festival and Best Feature Documentary from Big Sky Documentary Film Festival

Big Sky Documentary Film Festival

Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is an annual non-fiction film festival held in Missoula, Montana each February. The event showcases documentary films from around the world. The festival first began in 2003 as a seven day event...

. The film won over 25 international festival awards and was short-listed for an Oscar.

The film focuses on the work of Anderson Sá, a former drug trafficker who establishes the grassroots movement Afro Reggae. The group, Grupo Cultural AfroReggae (AfroReggae Cultural Group), was initially intended to draw in adolescents interested in a number of musical genres. These genres include, but are not limited to soul

Soul music

Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...

, reggae

Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

, rap, and hip-hop. Early on, Grupo Cultural AfroReggae offered a different type of education to the youth it attracted. This education included workshops focusing on dance, recycling, soccer, percussion, and more. The group aims at using music and education to better the lives of youth and prevent further growth of gangs. Grupo Cultural AfroReggae believes that through education, there is a greater likelihood that adolescents will not get caught up in drugs and gang violence.

External links

• interview with Damian Platt, coordinator for international partnerships of Afro Reggae