Voices From the Edge

After successful screenings in Rio de Janeiro, S�o Paulo, and New York, Brazilian filmmakers Daniela Broitman and Fernando Salis will be in the Bay Area to present and discuss their new documentary film, Voices From the Edge: The Favela Goes to the World Social Forum. The film has been selected by prestigious international festivals: Havana Film Festival (Cuba), Festival dei Popoli (Italy) and African Diaspora Film Festival (NYC).

The 70-minute documentary film portrays the struggle of 23 community leaders from Rio de Janeiro slums to participate in the III World Social Forum, in early 2003 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The WSF is the most important international event organized by civil society to discuss social justice � the antithetic equivalent of the World Economic Forum that takes place in Davos, Switzerland, every year. The community leaders want their work to achieve visibility. They want their voices to be heard. Through their perspective, the film narrates the WSF and reveals the challenges that corporate-driven globalization present not only to Rio de Janeiro but to the world political agenda.

Among other policymakers, intellectuals, and social activists, Brazil�s President Luiz In�cio Lula da Silva, linguist Noam Chomsky, Rio de Janeiro�s Mayor Cesar Maia, photographer Sebasti�o Salgado, Minister Benedita da Silva, filmmaker Fernando Solanas, and Venezuela�s President Hugo Ch�vez are featured in the film.

"Voices From the Edge" is the first documentary of the VIDEOFORUM PROJECT. The project uses the process of video production to create a forum-in-and-of-itself: promoting meetings and discussions on social issues, and spreading the goals of the WSF beyond the limits of its annual meetings. The primary focus of VIDEOFORUM is to empower low-income communities by including them in the international political debate.

The documentary�s preview screenings took place in May at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, and at Columbia University�s School of International and Public Affairs, both in New York. After the screenings, the film directors were invited to discuss with the audiences on the production of the documentary, social issues and the WSF. Both screenings were sold out.

The goal is to show the documentary on TV stations, NGOs, universities, cultural centers, low-income communities, conferences, and film and video festivals. The directors have already received invitations to screen and discuss the film at the Visual Sociology Conference 2003 at Southampton University (UK); the 2003 European Social Forum (in Paris, November 12-15); Emerson College in Boston; Stanford University and San Francisco State University, in the Bay Area, California. To learn more about the film and its agenda, check out www.videoforum.tv

The film�s production was supported by the Ford Foundation, the Salidago Foundation and Jos� Bonif�cio Foundation. The directors are now in search of funding to distribute the film and to continue the VIDEOFORUM PROJECT.

About the directors:

Daniela Broitman (daniela@videoforum.tv) � An independent documentary filmmaker, formerly worked as a reporter for Brazil�s leading newspapers, Folha de S�o Paulo and O Estado de S�o Paulo. She was part of the team that created the youth supplement of O Estado de S�o Paulo, Zap!, which received the Esso Award in 1996, the most prestigious journalism award in Brazil. Broitman has also published in magazines such as Veja SP, Elle, Claudia and �caro Brasil. In the United States, she produced and edited for television, worked as an editor at San Francisco internet companies Streetspace and Looksmart, and directed two films in New York. In 2003, she received a grant from Ford Foundation to complete her first full-length film, the documentary Voices From the Edge: The Favela Goes to the World Social Forum. Her previous film, �If I Go Totally Bananas: The Percussive Life of Cyro Baptista,� has been acquired by UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University for teaching purposes. Broitman has a Master�s degree in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.

Fernando Salis (fernando@videoforum.tv) is a professor at the School of Communications at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He was recently a visiting professor at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University (2001/2002). In Brazil he directed the series �Rizoma,� broadcast in Brazil and selected at Toronto International Environmental Video and Film Festival (2001/2002). Salis� documentary on urban transportation had its premiere at Dactyl Foundation in New York City (2002), and has been screened in Paris, Montreal, Toronto and eight state capitals in Brazil. In 2003, he received a grant from Ford Foundation to complete his documentary �Voices From the Edge: The Favela Goes to the World Social Forum.�

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