City Of God: Power, Poverty and Conflict

• An appreciation of the messages and values contained within the chosen films. What is the film saying about the society it depicts? Is there a moral message?

City of God is set in a slum in Brazil and is known as the place to go when you have noe money or you are broke. It is set from the 60s to the 80s. It follows the charcter Rocket whos brother is in the orginal gang "The Tender Trio" He is a simple person who doesn't like any of the violence in The City of God. He wants to be a photgrapher and starts as a delviery boy at a newspaper. He stays away from the drug dealing as best as possible, but the top hood is Le Ze, who Rocket grew up with a knows as a firend. I think the film is trying to show how much diffrent the society is to what people think of Brazil. It is showing there is more than just violence and killings. There is actaul back stories to the people and there are many diffrent people living there than just the drug dealers. I think the way the film is layed out makes you think like that. Each character having a turn to have there stories told in detail, all making sense. I think this was really good for instead of just thinking they are the "drug dealers" in society you see them as regular people. I think the moral message of the film is that even in a place were deaths just occur and nothing happens, I think it made people think about the place. In brazil 40,000 people are muredered or violently killed every year. I think this highlights the issue of gangs and how much violence actaully occurs. Also City of God demonstrates how it got to this point of gangs and shootings. Violence breeds more volence.

• An understanding of the relationship between form and content, possibly with a particular reference to distinctive stylistic features, e.g. does it have a documentary style or does the cinematography reference another film from another genre? Comment on film language.

• An understanding of contexts, especially time and place. Do some background research on when and where the film is set. Was there any controversy when it was released?

When the film was released the socialest presidant of Brazil saw it and said "it wasn't a film but a fact" Which I think is very true That it has had an effect on everyone and it is not just a story but something that has to be addressed. I really good quote I found says "City of God is not only a portrait of our favelas, it is also our portrait, at 24 frames a second, our faces blurred with the faces of 10-year-old children holding machine guns. All the manifestations of our chaos become visible. This film will be seen by the whole country in terror, and I believe it will cause transformations in the political arena" Which was said by the same person. Which I think sums up