Complexo do Alemao - filming a favela from the inside

Favela life from the inside: Mario Patrocinio talks about his new film Complexo do Alemao – Universo Paralelo

 Graham Douglas.

                       Mario  first went to Brazil in 2001 when he was 21, to study acting with the director Wolf Maya from Global TV . He felt then that Brazil “was pumping for change” and he had to come back and experience the country by total immersion. Then in 2004 his brother Pedro started university in Rio and Mario arrived from Paris. He had been there studying acting with Jack Waltzer a lifetime member of The Actors Studio who trained for many years with the foremost directors of the Stanislavsky System in the United States, including  Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler and Elia Kazan. (www.Jackwaltzer.com/about.html).

            In this interview he talks about how his early fascination with Brazil led him from a comfortable European world into this Parallel Universe, where, violence and crime are a constant presence but where there is also more warmth and humanity than in the normal world he was used to. His acting training and his intense curiosity about life enabled him to overcome many practical obstacles to making the film, and led him to some challenging personal reflections

The film, Complexo do Alemao - Parallel Universe,  which was shown at the annual Lisbon Documentary Film Festival in Lisbon in October (www.DocLisboa.org), premières in LA on Dec 3rd and New York  Dec. 11th, and later in London. It is his first film and the first commercial film to show favela life from the inside.

The full interview with pictures can be seen at www.theprisma.co.uk - when I get the link… after the paper was hacked