Documentary about the musical and social phenomenon of Brazilian funk (or Carioca Funk), a style derived from Miami Bass, based on repetitive bass drum loops and lyrics full of sexual and vi... Read allDocumentary about the musical and social phenomenon of Brazilian funk (or Carioca Funk), a style derived from Miami Bass, based on repetitive bass drum loops and lyrics full of sexual and violent overtones, not directly related to American funk/soul music. This style emerged in t... Read allDocumentary about the musical and social phenomenon of Brazilian funk (or Carioca Funk), a style derived from Miami Bass, based on repetitive bass drum loops and lyrics full of sexual and violent overtones, not directly related to American funk/soul music. This style emerged in the slums and poor neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro, and is deeply associated with the lower... Read all
- Awards
- 2 nominations
Photos
- Self
- (as D.J. Marlboro)
- Self
- (as Gaiola das Popozudas)
- Self
- (as Deise da Injeção)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
The immediate reaction Vanessinha and Tati faced from the media was outright rejection. "The feeling I got then was that those girls weren't supposed to use their knowledge, their experiences in the music they made, which means they weren't supposed to express themselves." Her feelings of empathy turned into complicity, Ms Garcia decided to make a movie. She phoned the Do-It Girl, called on for an interview and spent one year in and out of the slums, going to funk dances all over Rio.
Dwellers of Brazilian slums are not unused to the foreign gaze, ever searching for glimpses into a harsh reality that, since the samba is samba, parades itself as a wellspring of Brazilian authenticity. See for instance Aracy Côrtes's 1932 recording of "There's a French Lady in the Slum", entirely sung in pidgin French. And although historians of Brazilian popular music would be hard pressed to find one single samba dealing with the visit of a beach front dweller to the hills on whose slopes most of the slums rest, accounts of the problematic descent of the slum dweller into the beach front are not uncommon.
How have the people of City of God reacted to Ms Garcia's visits? "Since the beginning I was welcome, probably because I was one of the first women they saw that could speak Portuguese, was interested in them and was Brazilian like them." No one ever hinted that she should request drug dealers' permission and Ms Garcia sensed that she was allowed to do her job as long as she was honest to the people involved and herself.
Ms Garcia sees Rio funk as the local avatar of the punk spirit. The roughness of punk is certainly a trait of Rio funk. Much to the filmmaker's regret, however, it is also a trait of her movie: Ms Garcia strove to get funding from local companies. Their replies were invariably the same: "we do not wish to see our name associated with funk dances." "I'm Ugly But Trendy" was made with no money at all. So much the better: just like the subjects it portrays, the film bears the scars of undeserved poverty.
So far as one can judge from the documentary results, in the slum, honesty is the best policy. The level of empathy between Ms Garcia and the dwellers whose everyday life she records is amazing. As a result the viewer is brought into intimate contact with people whose trust he or she might only be able to conquer after much labour if at all. Returning from excursions to fields into which few of us would venture, Ms Garcia brings back the marvel of a music in the making. And we hear Rio funk as it has never been heard before. MC G3 opens the film singing unaccompanied against the silent backdrop of a massive wall of loudspeakers, thus connecting the sound crews of Rio to the Bronx block parties of the seventies and the Jamaican sound systems of the sixties in a refreshingly colloquial way. A vocal improvisation to the accompaniment of hand claps by a group of friends connects Rio funk to the most orthodox Brazilian traditions while establishing a link between these traditions and the sounds of The Last Poets. Ms Garcia is every musical ethnographer's object of desire!
While filming, Ms Garcia was unsure what the end product of her efforts would be. Anyway, the funk acts she was working with remained collaborative and open. She believes it was only on watching the film at the classy Odeon cinema in Rio that they realized what she was up to. "In my film there is no sociologist or anthropologist to explain the funk people's words; they talk by themselves." In her view, their reaction to the Rio première testified to her success: "they were happy and loud during the whole session".
But is "I'm Ugly But Trendy" really a film where the funk people speak by themselves? Of course not! If this were true Ms Garcia would not be a movie director. The reality she presents is a highly contrived one. Rather than a film about funk, "I'm Ugly But Trendy" is a film à thèse, a film about sexual explicitness as a means to women's empowerment.
The world of Rio funk moves fast and leaves few footprints behind. If on the dance floor all human beings shine with the transcendental beauty of their trance of joy, in 2007 the sight of women who do not even remotely conform to accepted ideals of feminine beauty taking to the stage to shout their readiness to engage in the most outrageously wild forms of sexual intercourse has all but vanished. Ms Garcia documentary remains a tribute to this possibility. I have watched it countless times. I have watched countless times youngsters watch it. The memory of their faces remains as vivid as the memory of the film's finest moments: alert, their bodies projecting from their sits, their eyes wide open, their faces smiling in wonder at a culture that all but a few seem intent on keeping away from them.
- palombini
- Mar 15, 2007
Details
- Runtime1 hour 1 minute
- Color