BCA FAVELA SEASON Welcome to the BCA Cine Club January season! We reopen on Thursday 18 January, with a new, cutting-edge film programme. This year, the BCA Cine Club will take you on a cinematic journey throughout Brazil, by focusing on different themed seasons. Let's make this programme reach far and wide. Help BCA spread the word about it! The January season opens with films that feature favela (slum)-life and its social implications, in three very different Brazilian cities: Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Salvador. To round-off the Favela Season, we will present a lecture on the theme, by Alexandre Frediani, a PhD researcher at Oxford Brookes University. This season is fundamental for anybody with an interest in the unplanned and mushrooming shanty towns of developing countries. How is Brazilian cinema dealing with this topic? Come and find out. Join us for films, culture, Brazilian snacks and more at BCA House. Programme: FILMS:

Thursday 18 Jan, 7.15pm Lower City (Cidade Baixa) A violent, visceral and sexually frank Brazilian drama about the mutually destructive relationship between two low level hustlers and a stripper, from the filmmaker of The Motorcycle Diaries, Walter Salles. Lower City is a raw and relentlessly physical film about low life and high passion in the African-influenced city of Salvador da Bahia in northeast Brazil. Like City Of God, prison drama Carandiru and Amores Perros, it's a kinetic experience steeped in casual violence, violent sex and the brutal demands of Latino street life. Unlike those films, which seethed with anger at social injustice and state sanctioned violence, Lower City is intimately engaged with the emotional lives of its characters as the ties that bind two childhood friends are unravelled by sex and violence. Winner Cannes Film Festival and Los Angeles Latin Film Festival. (Sergio Machado / 2005 / 83mins / C 18 / English subtitles)

Thursday 25 Jan, 7.15pm Favela Rising Favela Rising documents a man and a movement, a city divided and a favela(slum) united. Haunted by the murders of his family and many of his friends, Anderson Sá is a former drug-trafficker who turns social revolutionary in Rio de Janeiro's most feared slum. Through hip-hop music, the rhythms of the street, and Afro-Brazilian dance he rallies his community to counteract the violent oppression enforced by teenage drug armies and sustained by corrupt police. At the dawn of liberation, just as collective mobility is overcoming all odds and Anderson's grassroots Afro Reggae movement is at the height of its success, a tragic accident threatens to silence the movement forever. Film of the year 2005 by the International Documentary Association, Winner Tribeca Film Festival and Sidney International Film Festival. (Jeff Zimbalist e Matt Mochary / 2005 / 80 mins / C12 / English subtitles)

Sat 27 Jan, 5.00pm The Trespasser (O Invasor) Coming on like a Brazilian version of The Sopranos, this cracking thriller is set on the mean streets of São Paulo, where two business men hire assassin Anisio to kill one of their partners. But having unleashed the scraggly slum-dwelling hitman, they find they can't control him – not only does he seduce the daughter of his proposed target, he's soon turning up at their offices and demanding a security contract. With its unsettling handheld cinematography, pumping Brazilian rap soundtrack and masterful grasp of the class war that fuels Anisio's literal invasion of the white-collar engineering firm, this is a startlingly edgy portrait of the “suicide capitalism” that's produced Brazil's innercity slums. It's angry, political and armed with all the devastating impact of a pump-action shotgun. Best Latin American Film at Sundance. (Beto Brant / 2002 / 97 mins / C18 / English subtitles) Admission: £3,00 / £2,50 (concs. BCA members) - towards Cine Club fund

LECTURE:

Wednesday 24 Jan, 7.00pm “Favelas: is there a solution? Case study of a Salvador slum” A talk with Alexandre Frediani, PhD researcher at the the Department of Planning of Oxford Brookes University The talk, based on Frediani's on going PhD research, is an evaluation of the squatter upgrading programme, Ribeira Azul, funded by the World Bank in Salvador da Bahia. The research applies Amartya Sen's concept of development as freedom in the urban context, and assesses its usefulness on the thinking and practice of squatter settlement intervention. Frediani holds a BSc on Development Studies in Journalism from the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK. He is a member of the Human Development and Capability Association and coordinator of the thematic group on Participatory Methods. (In English) Admission: £3,50 / £3,00 (concs. BCA members) towards the costs of bringing Alexandre Frediani to London.

ALL THE EVENTS TAKE PLACE AT: BCA HOUSE 22 Chiswick High Road, W4 1TE - London,UK Tube: Stamford Brook - District Line (map) To book seats: 020 8747 4770 | bca@brazilian.org.uk (book in advance to avoid disappointment) Further details on: WWW.BRAZILIAN.ORG.UK Brazilian Contemporary Arts, celebrating Brazilian Arts in the UK since 1981 Click Here to Unsubscribe Click Here to forward this message to a friend