Essay!

Question: How has research into the social and/or cultural context of your Close Study film influenced your understanding of it?

After watching the film i was quite shocked as when you see Brazil advertised it is painted to be a lovely, exotic place especially when travel agents where trying to sell holidays to Rio. It showed the lovely weather, the clear sea, the sandy beaches and lots of carnivals. However City Of God paints a completely different picture by showing the favelas, rather than the posh and wealthy parts of Rio.

The opening scene of City Of God is the sharpening of knives and a close up shot of people dancing which would go with the original idea of Rio with all the carnivals. However it moves onto a chicken being slaughtered in front of the camera, such as the line or being killed, then the blood taken out, plucked and then ready to eat. This is all done in a market and you can already tell that it is a different picture to what you would think of when people would describe Rio. When another chicken escapes the first words you hear are " fuck, the chicken's got away." Then a gang of boys chance it holding guns and even threatening people. The group of boys age from men to very young which is worrying as they are shooting guns. This shows the different types of culture and how the favelas are in Rio. This scene is shot very close and has a claustrophobic feel to it. Compared to the adverts to Rio you can see it is completely different as you can see the graffiti on the walls, cracked floor, very limited space and the gun crime is a huge problem.

In looking more into the favelas of Rio, i found out the shocking reality that the life expectancy is about 21. This helped me understand a little more about the film, as it showed all ages of people dying from children to young adults. By now knowing the life expectancy it shows the worrying true reality of how young the population die in the slums. I looked at the statistics of murders in Brazil of minors who were killed and there were 3,937 between 1987 and 2001 compared to only 467 murders in Israel and Palestine. I found these statistics shocking as it shows the true reality or the brutal murders of young children and high the statistics are compared to other countries. In watching the film the only way to live is by breaking the law by either doing drugs, joining gangs or gun crime. But by joining one of these things will inevitable result in death and if you're born in the favella, you die in the favella. Throughout the film it's a vicious circle where you have to join a gang to live and have money but then you die for having it. An example of this is when Shaggy who was a member of The Tender Trio who tried to leave the favella's and start of fresh with his girlfriend Bernice, but as he tried to leave he was shot dead . However even if your not a member of a gang you can still be shot dead even if your innocent. As it shows in the film anyone can be shot by the police and then questions will be asked after even if the person had nothing to hide.

- gang members are all males and no females.