The Treasure-Troves found in Trash

 “African Underground: Hip Hop in Senegal”  touched me because it showed how using lyrics to preach positivity through hip hop and how it ameliorates its community, defying the stereotypes that the masses might have about popular hiphop.

This film was contextualized by Media That Matters. What do we mean by contextualizing the film? We want to package a film with more information than what is included in the content. Making a documentary film and screening it is called the dissemination of information, the first step needed but not the sole basis of creating change. Bringing in educational paradigms helps the narrative to shift into a transformative model. As a human rights educator, you need to open a space for discourse with an emphasis on public participation, not an attack on already set up laws. By creating different Strategies, you innovate different Ethics of Representation.

Boca De Lixo by Eduardo Coutinho (the beginning can be viewed here, for the time being) touched me in a similar way.

In the beginning, you see a massive amount of children searching through garbage heaps for valuable stuff. As Coutinho continues to approach closer, showing that he is not there to shame nor harm the people in the trash compound, they begin to open up to him, primarily serving reasons, dignifying their presence and labour behind searching for treasures in the trash:

"Fernando Collor de Mello [the president at the time, correct the name] is starving us to death."

“As long as the dump stays, we stay.”

Each one interviewed separate the concept of stealing from working. They consider their scavenging as work, and they’re proud of it. A beautiful segment which Coutinho incorporates is having a child who knows many of the main actors around cite the names  and accompany each name with correlated filmed-still portraits, adding a richness to the soundtrack by using Industrialesque garbage can music.

Coutinho, it appears, is not out to make people feel terrible about their lives and purposes. He simply asks them to relate their stories and gives them the ability to speak for themselves.

 A popular Brazilian song plays on the radio while he shows the "workers" in their natural habitats and by doing this, he is exposing their daily lives without tainting it with his own judgment. For example, he films Cicera’s daughter singing and while that happens, he films Cicera and her family doing routine acts (combing hair and then combing the daughter’s hair).

The most significant part of this interesting and literally messy ethnography is when he films them discussing their black/white portrait photos because it's as if they don't recognize themselves. Coutinho is giving them a piece of themselves back for some self-reflection and this allows them to open up purely from the inside. There is a poetry in their stories and also a horrifying realistic side.

One woman injured herself with a needle from hospital waste.  She says that she sees the waste from the hospital regularly and that the hospital also disposes of some newborns and the police will take them from time to time.

Structural issues shape choice. You should not blame victims. Political media such as this allows artists to give their subjects the developmental capacities to express themselves.

Jurema, at first resistant to speak, said she was born in the trash. She has been working there for 30 years. They don’t always eat from the trash. She doesn’t like the image of eating from the trash which is why she at first said that they’re feeding their pigs or animals at home. She is aware of the social repercussion this might have on her image, considering she has 8 kids.  She relies on God to help and says the dump assists. The grandmother does not help, exclaiming “When I had 12 kids, nobody helped me ever.” Jurema's husband says he would like 12 kids. She agrees and says whatever god sends, both smiling, genuine, and not at all affected by their supposed unideal situation. She has a similar matching name for each boy and girl, i.e. Flavio and Flavia, which provides comical relief. They talk about the story of how they met and their relationship: “The fruit of fights: the kids. We haven’t fought in over a year. I miss it. I have no belly.”

Eduardo Cortinho runs an NGO. He has made a plethora of films on very low budgets. There were many descriptions flooding forth from such a powerful and proud film: Expository. Reflexive. Participatory. Raw Material. Unscripted. Representational. Impressionistic.

How is this a human rights film? How does Coutinho transform pity in this film?:
 They don’t have to deal with the society. Society is the garbage that they’re picking through.

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What is the role of the photographs in the film?

He shows the vultures and the people like vultures. But then he displays the photos and shows them as people. It’s a dual perspective

Aesthetically, the film is a meta-critique of documentary. Boca de Licho- a place in Sao Paulo where Cinema Novo started filming dirty aesthetic, how that phase was turning into a bourgeois practice. This is a literally dirty film. He should have removed the dog from the scene with Whiskers, for example, if you were trying to get a clear story.

This leads into the essence of human interaction. We’re always exchanging something.

With the cheap Xeroxes, Coutinho is criticizing the exchange process through ridicule. It’s a portrait of manual labor in Brasil. It’s not just about dignity. He shows that each one of these people has an emotional, spiritual, physical, and sexual life. It’s about integrity. Coutinho delivers this subject with dignity and gives the poor a dignified respect.

When you think outside of the box. You are no longer defined by your career. There are social disparities. 

We need to understand the depth the application of a problem through a conceptual framework.

I encourage you to watch this piece and reflect: What are the human rights issues that you found in this film? What are the health issues we could tackle? What is a right for an international standard for health? Here are a couple for you to mull over:

1. The right to risk
2. The right to procreate
3. The right to happiness
4. The right of the unborn child not to be infected with HIV
5. Relatively Clean Air
6. Clean Water.
7. Nutritional foods.
8. Living conditions
9. Right to community
10. Right to health information