Toward a General Theory of the Street, Published in French

Shine a Light's first major research project, a four year old study of 300 different NGOs serving marginalized children in 49 Latin American cities, came to be "Toward a General Theory of the Street", a book on what works and what doesn't in work with these children.  Thanks to the dedicated work of two volunteers, Sophie Terrisse and Sonia Erraud, this ground-breaking study is now available in French.  You can download it at http://www.shinealight.org/Texts/TheorieGenerale.pdf, or by going to the Books page at Shine a Light.

Shine a Light annual report

The SAL Annual Report is now available at http://www.shinealight.org/Annual.pdf

"Making of" En Busca de la Vida

Por fin, acabé la edición del documental donde los muchachos y las muchachas que hicieron "En Busca de la Vida" cuentan cómo lo hicieron.  Es fascinante, y muestra la inteligencia y creatividad de los jóvenes artistas.

New Music video by an ex-street kid in Bolivia

From the NGO Performing Life, in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

En la rádio

Una entrevista sobre "En Busca de la Vida," la telenovela hecha por niños y niñas indígenas bolivianas, en el programa "Buscando América," difundido en más que 300 emisoras en casi todos los países de América Latina.  Se puede escuchar aquí.

KidVid and Popular Education

In 2007, I wrote a short book suggesting ways to use kidvid (especially Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, Shrek, Home on the Range, Robots, and A Bug's Life) as a way to teach children values of solidarity and critical thinking.  Thanks to Mala Shah, the book is now available in English, and you can download it here.

Nuevo Libro sobre la infancia en situación de Calle

Marcos Urcola acaba de publicar un libro sobre la situación de calle en Rosario, Argentina.  Para más informaciones, escribe a Marcos a Marcos Urcola <murcola@hotmail.com> 

American Premiere of Life's Roulette

On Saturday, October 30, the CCA ion Santa Fe will host the American premiere of "Life's Roulette", the world's first fictional feature film made by former child soldiers.  The young men and women who had fought on both sides in the Colombian civil war use the metaphor of urban life to tell the story of their own lives, making what some critics have called "a true work of art".

Though the movie deals with difficult stories, don't fear that it is a downer, or something to inspire a guilt-trip in the viewer.  In addition to moments of comedy, the film ends happily, reflecting the positive turn that the kids felt they had made as they learned cinema and other skills to help them make their way in the world.  One of the young filmmakers expressed his hopes in this way:

“As we show this film, I think that the way people think will change.  They’ll look at us in a different way. They’ll see that we have these difficulties, but also these qualities that matter more than what’s bad. What’s good about every human being is that we have bad qualities,  but we also have good qualities that overcome the bad.” 

The film doesn't hide the fact that the camera-men and -women had guns, and not cameras, in their hands, only weeks before they began filming.  It is often rough, often shaky, but always compelling, as teenagers who had been child soldiers show that they can be something else.

Life's Roulette: at the CCA, 1050 Old Pecos Trail, in Santa Fe, at 1 PM on Saturday, October 30.  $5 donation in lieu of tickets.  After the showing, several of the young filmmakers and former child soldiers will join us from Colombia through internet video-conferencing.

"Into the Light"

Seth Biderman just published an excellent article on Shine a Light for the Santa Fe Reporter.  I think it's one of the better pieces written on Shine a Light, and narratively better than almost anything on our site.  It's available at http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-5680-into-the-light.html.

Barbie Muda de Endereço

Os adultos, preocupados pelo politicamente correto, muitas vezes perdemos de vista o fato que as crianças não interpretam os ícones de consumo ao igual como imaginávamos.  A Barbie desta história na favela não é a mesma como a Barbie capitalista!

We adults, worried about what is politically correct, often lose sight of the fact that children don't always interpret the idols of consumer life as we do.  The Barbie of this story has nothing to do with the capitalist tool we all thought we knew.

O Assalto

No Projeto Transições, feito com crianças de Creche na periferia de Rio de Janeiro, trabalhamos muito com a construção de narrativas infantis.  A brincadeira de polícia e ladrão é um dos mais comuns em todo o mundo, e tinha uns resultados muito legais na Creche de Salgueiro.

A Bola Furada

Nos últimos meses, a gente vai trabalhando uma série de filmes com uma aula da escola pública de Campeche, aqui em Florianópolis.  A Bola Furada é o primeiro de quatro filmes feitos pela turma.

Crashing a Parade

I'm in Bolivia right now, finishing our major project this year, a telenovela made by indigenous kids from the shantytowns above La Paz.  The story of the soap opera traces the lives of a dozen kids in the middle of a huge social movement that expelled two corrupt presidents in 2003 and 2005, and then finally elected Evo Morales, the first Indian president of this overwhelmingly indigenous country.  The challenge we have faced, however, is how to represent the huge uprisings in 2005, when millions of people blockaded the city, protested in the streets, and finally forced Carlos Mesa from office.

By chance, this week is the anniversary of La Paz... something like 400 years as a city, if I recall.  And Bolivia celebrates these civic events with parades that remind me of what I read about cities would present themselves in France in the 18th century, where each état (social group) would march through the streets to be recognized by the others: the butchers, the bakers, the traders, the priests...  Here, each of the city government departments marches with a military band, so you have all of the tax collectors, then the street sweepers, then the sewer cleaners, then the bureaucrats from the water department, and on and on.  Most march in uniforms.  The rest of the population (probably half a million people last night) stands by the side of the main street in the city and watches, cheering or protesting, depending on what they think of the civil servants (social workers working with the disabled got big cheers.  Tax collectors did not).  It is a very, very strange event for someone from outside, but central to what it means to be Bolivian.

The tradition of social movements invading the parade is not as venerable as the parade itself (which probably dates to the founding of the city), but it is much more interesting.  So Compa (the organization we collaborate with on this project) and several other groups decided to crash the parade to demand that the government release the archives of the military dictatorship.  Because though the government of Evo Morales has done wonderful things with macroeconomic policy, social inclusion, education, and other issues, it had to ally with the military to avoid a coup d'etat.  This has meant that the country has not yet come to terms with its repressive history.  The families of the disappeared were in front, all carrying the photos of their loved ones, and Compa came behind with a murga band (sort of like an Andean samba) and loud voices demanding justice.

It was not easy to crash the parade: we found a side street and organized ourselves in the watching crowd, and then as the legal groups moved forward, we slid in to the line, rather like a car trying to merge into a lane that doesn't want it there.  Dozens of other groups, from high schools and gay clowns  to the fan club of the Bolívar soccer team, we trying to do the same.  For half an hour, I wondered if I would ever escape, as thousands of people pushed from all sides, each one with an instrument, a sign, or a disguise.  It was about 35 degrees Fahrenheit and, at 12,000 feet above sea level, hard to breathe, but finally we were there.  Drums, dancing, the roar of the crowd to approve a cause they thought just... and about 5 miles of marching.

And for our group, a perfect representation of what the revolution of 2005 looked like from inside.  It will make for a great couple of episodes of the telenovela!

Kayeye

Several years ago, I did a long project with refugee teenagers in Bogotá, Colombia, showing how to reform schools so they could better serve children who were victims of the war.  Now, almost six years later, many of those kids are young adults, and two of them -- Carlos Cortés and Fabio Ovalle -- have become professional musicians and formed the group Kayeye.  Here is their first music video.

Hace algunos años, hice un proyecto en Bogotá con muchachos desplazados por la violencia política en ese país, mostrando cómo reformar las escuelas para mejorar sus vidas.  Ahora, unos seis años después, dos -- Carlos Cortés y Fabio Ovalle -- se han tornado músicos profesionales, y han formado un grupo que se llama Kayeye.  Aquí apresento su primero video-clip.

Bats/Morcegos/Murciélagos

I fear that since Helena Iara was born, I have been a very poor scribe of this blog.  Other things seem more important, and the time I have to work has been dedicated to other things.  None the less, I am proud to post this new film this morning, which uses new 3D animation technology that we had never used before.

Pierre, the boy who recorded this song and invented the story, goes to the Salgueiro community pre-school in Rio de Janeiro, like many of the other kids who created movies that I have shown recently on this blog.  He is, however, a little older, and participates in the after-school homework assistance program.

More music from Rio de Janeiro

This song, "Bats" by the six year old Pierre, is yet another in the series of music by little kids from poor neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro state.  The story told in the song, about going into the woods to find bats, seemed to demand a new style of music, one that fit with the storytelling style.

The moral Life of Babies

I found this article in the NY Times Magazine fascinating as a way to think about how babies think about the world.  Since Shine a Light has begun to work with little kids, it strikes me as important to see them as moral and intellectual agents, not merely as little learners, sponging up what adults teach them.  The article begins this way:

Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands. The boy had just seen a puppet show in which one puppet played with a ball while interacting with two other puppets. The center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the right, who would pass it back. And the center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the left . . . who would run away with it. Then the two puppets on the ends were brought down from the stage and set before the toddler. Each was placed next to a pile of treats. At this point, the toddler was asked to take a treat away from one puppet. Like most children in this situation, the boy took it from the pile of the “naughty” one. But this punishment wasn’t enough — he then leaned over and smacked the puppet in the head.

Looking for Life

Having a new baby on hand makes work a little more difficult, but I have been able to take some time to subtitle the three most recent episodes of Looking for Life, the telenovela made by indigenous children in Bolivia.

Episode 13

Episode 14

Episode 15

Our Daughter was born last night

What matters most with a baby is to talk, of course.  The content isn't anywhere near as important as the tone, the eye contact, the attention.  None the less, I'm very glad to say that Helena Iara was very attentive as I tried to explain to her the development of pre-socratic philosophy and autarchic, decentralized government as a root of the thinking of Thales and Anaximander.  Whether these hypotheses are true or whether she will even be interested in philosophy matters very little.  What was great was her constant, curious eye contact.

Today I'm interrupting the Shine a Light blog to celebrate an entirely personal event, one that has little to do with street kids or child soldiers or indigenous kids making telenovelas (though the name Iara is Guaraní...).  Rita and my daughter was born last night, weighing in at a little over seven pounds, and since then has shown herself to be strong, healthy, and curious.  Her eyes are in constant movement until they find an interesting object or person, at which point they maintain an intense attention.  Pediatric neurologists say that babies can't focus their eyes yet at this age, and certainly the concept of an "object" hasn't yet entered her eager brain, but she certainly pays attention to color, form, and movement.

For the Pre-socratics, the world was made of up of four elements: water, fire, earth, and air.  For Helena Iara, the elements are probably movement, color, smell, and sound... but they still come together to form a world.

I'll be continuing these reflections on another blog, so as not to confuse it with Shine a Light.  helenaiara.blogspot.com

Some thoughts on modern fairy tales

The history of fairy tales helps understand the sometimes disturbing elements in several of the films made by children in Rio de Janeiro.  We might be tempted to see it as a result of the violence around them (and in some cases, it clearly is: Kevin's story that the Barata Yazmin lives in a dark place full of bullets), but when we look at the way that fairy tales developed at the end of the middle ages, we see that the brutality and yuckiness we see in many of these films only expresses a post-modern version of a much older tradition.

Robert Darnton, for instance, traces the history of the redaction of Little Red Riding Hood, which in the earliest written forms we have (from the folklorist Perrault in the 17th century) was a deeply disturbing and nihilist tragedy.  When the girl (no red riding hood is mentioned) arrives at her grandmother's house, the wolf demands that she take off all of her clothes, burn them in the fire, and then climb naked into be with him before he devours her.  Darnton criticizes Bettleheim's famous interpretation that the story contains hidden symbols of sexuality, insisting that people of the late middle ages had no hang ups to force them to express lessons about sex in code.  They could do it in plain language.  Nor is there a woodsman to cut her from the wolf's belly at the end of the story; that was an addition made by the Brother's Grimm much later, adding an unrelated German fairy tale.

When Beatriz tells the story of Little Red Riding Hood in The Incredible Story of Granny and the Big Bad Wolf, she hews closely to the orthodox version until the end, when she cuts the added-on story of the woodsman.  In fact, her "erroneous" reading of the text is more honest to the original than the pablum added by the Brother's Grimm to make a disturbing story more palatable to the nascent bourgeoisie.  One of Liberation Theology's most interesting insights about hermeneutics was that the poor, more similar to the original writers and readers of the Bible, had a certain epistemological privilege in reading and interpreting the Bible.  One might ask if the same is not true of kids from the favela reading old fairy tales.  Their lives are much closer to the abject poverty and stateless violence that characterized the late middle ages than is the life of any middle class intellectual.

It's worth while looking carefully at the way Beatriz concludes the story, the joy with which she presents the tragedy.  Her faked scream and quick exit from the camera may show more about medieval and favela subjectivity than hundreds of anthropological essays:


I'll add to these reflections soon, thinking through the other movies made by the pre-school kids in Rio de Janeiro.

Amarelo/Yellow

Quase sempre, os adultos lêem as histórias para crianças como se fossem inocentes, "infantis." Porém, se lemos os contos dos irmãos 

Grimm ou outros contos de fadas na sua forma original, vemos que podem ser, realmente, histórias estranhas, violentas, confusas... Em 

Amarelo, Allan, um menino de 3 anos de idade da comunidade de Salguiero, Estado de Rio de Janeiro, faz uma leitura da história 

disneyficada de Peter Pan, embora sem ler as palavras do livro. Lendo as imagens a través das suas próprias experiências, mostra uma 

verdade da história que a maioria de adultos não seriam capazes de ver: a sua violência, aleatoridade, e surrealismo. Não é necessáriamente uma melhor ou pior leitura que a ortodoxa, mas é interessante, um tipo de hermeneútica de suspeita (pra usar uma idéia de Paul Ricouer) 

infantil.

We almost always read chilldren's literature in an infantilized way, as if it were merely cute. In fact, however, if we look at the stories of theBrothers Grimm or any other original folk tales, we quickly see violence, strange and confusing stories. With Yellow, Allan, a three year old living in the favela of Salguiero (Rio de Janeiro state) offers his own reading of the story of Peter Pan, using only the images and his own experiences as a touchstone. The result is a little disturbing, but I think it simply points to the surreal and aleatory aspects of the story itself,which we adults often lose in our wish to see only the cute in children. I see this reading as a sort of hermeneutics of suspicion, to apply an idea from Paul Riceour to the world of children's thinking.

En Busca de la Vida/Looking for Life

Episode 12

Episode 11

I just posted several new episodes of Looking for Life, the soap opera we are making with Aymara Indian kids in Bolivia, 

on YouTube. Several weeks ago, I cross-posted the first two episodes on this blog, but I wanted to put these more recent 

ones up now as a point of comparison. One of the proposals of making a soap opera, with serial episodes posted every 

week, was to show how kids learn to film, act, and tell stories. I think it is obvious, comparing these different episodes, 

what an amazing improvement they have made in every aspect of filmmaking.

New Article/ Nuevo Ensayo

Hace algunos meses, escribí un artículo para el Harvard Divinity Bulletin, donde usé las ideas del filósofo francés Emmanuel Levinas para pensar la manera que adolescentes que eran niños soldado en la guerra cvil Colombiana denuncian a la violencia y nos llaman a la consciencia.  Aida Ramos, una traductora epañola que trabaja con nosotros como voluntaria, acaba de traducir el texto en español, y está disponsible aquí.

Several months ago, I published an essay in the Harvard Divinity Review, using the ideas of the French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas to think through the way that children who had once been soldiers in the Colombian Civil War denounce violence and injustice and call others to conscience. I have just published the essay on the Shine a Light website, under the title The Prophet at War.

Morar na Favela não é Fácil/Livin' in the Hood ain't easy

One of our most successful projects over the last several years has been City of Rhyme, a group of young rappers from the most violent favelas of Recife, in Brazil's poor northeast.  MC Okado's "Livin' in the Hood Ain't Easy", composed when he was 14 years old, became an anthem in the city: I remember that several days after the concert that launched the group, where 5000 people from every social class saw the kids perform downtown, I was in an entirely different part of Recife and heard two kids beat-boxing and rapping the song.  It really captures the challenge of living in the favela... and then pride kids have that they are able to survive and even thrive in aplace that would kill almost anyone else.

The lyrics, translated into English:

Living in the slum ain’t no easy task.

Those who live in Arruda must be alert. I say,

Living in the slum ain’t no easy task.

Those who live in Santo Amaro must also be alert.

Many brothers are gone, but I’m still around

I’m a B-boy, a capoeirista, a graffiti writer, an MC.

C’mon over, bro’

I’m M.C. Okado, from the edge of the canal.

And I’m telling you:

When I’m on stage, I don’t envy anyone,

In this material world, you’re worth what you own.

“We’re from the slum, so we face discrimination when applying for work”

“And then, when we get work, they say we’re sell-outs”

The slums are full of junkies,

Bullets fly everywhere,

Kids can’t play outside without risking their lives.

With so much violence around me, I don’t even know what to do.

But God is with me, and I’ll never get involved.

Living in the slum -- what a nightmare!

Most killings take place in Cardinô.

He’s responsible for the ruin of Pernambuco

Is proud of having eliminated so many of our brothers.

He feeds on gunshots and corpses.

He has no talent, no ideas, no common sense, and nothing to talk about.

How to make an arrow/Como hacer una flecha

Este película, sencilla, lenta, y bella, es una de mis favoritas del cinema popular que hemos hecho en los últimos años. Fue filmado por un niño de 9 años y dos niñas de 7 y 8, todos de la tribu Sáliba, al lado del Rio Meta, en los Llanos Orientales de Colombia. La incluyo aquí porque un festival de cinema indígena en Nepal acaba de pedir su participación.

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This slow, simple, and beautiful film is one of my favorites of the many we have made with indigenous children around Latin America. It was filmed by a nine year old boy and two younger girls, all from the Sáliba tribe at the headwaters of the Orinoco, in Colombia. I include it here because an indigenous group from Nepal just asked for it to be included in their international film festival.

On Luxury and Necessity, Part II

Several days ago, I wrote about how the emphasis on fashion among Aymara and Quechua women in Bolivia had the unexpected effect of contributing to indigenous consciousness and forming part of the revolutions that brought real democracy to Bolivia in 2003 and 2005.  It is interesting to see how the same analysis of luxury and necessity can play out among programs serving marginalized children.

While I was in Bolivia, I sat in on an evaluation of Compa (the NGO where I was working) by the Kellogg Foundation.  Several of the young artists trained at Compa began their stories in the same way: their parents had not wanted them to attend music or theater classes.  Their families were poor and needed to think pragmatic: to make money right now (working) or at least to study something practical that would make them a good salary soon.  Every one of the young people interviewed said that they had to overcome these arguments in order to take arts classes.

Compa promotes transformative social change, and doesn't want its work evaluated just in terms of how individual kids who learned arts there are doing.  None the less, it is telling, I think, that something like 75% of young people between 19-25 who attend or attended Compa are now taking college courses.  That's against a baseline of something less than 10% in El Alto, and less that 5% in Bolivia (I'm not quoting exact stats here, just ball park figures).  So once again here, we have a result where the "luxury" of studying the arts has a more positive, practical effect than the "pragmatic" solution of work or vocational studies.

In contrast, then, we should look at programs that focus on the vocational, training carpenters and mechanics and information professionals; the Salesian Fathers, who run respected and imitated NGOs all over Latin America, can serve as a great point of reference.  It is fascinating to look at kids who have gone through many of the Ciudades del Niño or Casas Don Bosco around the continent.  They are well behaved, quiet, and good workers.  Most seem quite ready to work hard and provide for their families.  Yet the spark we see in street kids, the rough charisma, the angry hope... it isn't there.  These kids are very different from their peers who have done arts programs like Compa (or Pé no Chão in Brazil or Taller de Vida or Colegio del Cuerpo in Colombia).

I'm reminded of two references here.  One is Freud's Reality Principle, the necessity of knowing what is possible and what is not.  According to many American interpretations of Freud, the point of psychoanalysis is to bring people in line with the reality principle, so that they no longer live in their fantasies.  The other reference comes from the first chapters of Don Quijote, the scene where the barber and the priest plan to burn Don Quijote's books because they have torn him out of the limitations of reality that should contain him.  The American Freaudians, the priest, and the barber share with the parents of many kids in El Alto a very simple, and very logical idea: you have to be pragmatic, you have to know what is really possible instead of going off and tilting at windmills.  In the same way, both left and right wing critics of the cholitas insisted that spending money on fashion was a mistake when there were so many other political or family necessities.

In fact, though, it appears that the most "practical" decision, in terms of the concrete political, personal, and educational results, is exactly the opposite: to invest in what seems like luxury: in the arts, in fashion, in a rusty spear and shield.  Not all luxuries have these results, of course -- cocaine and video games might do as well for poor kids and families in Bolivia -- but it seems that a large part of wisdom is figuring out which luxuries will, indeed, make a difference.

On Luxury and Necessity

I have just gotten back from La Paz, Bolivia, where I have been working on a telenovela (Latin American soap opera) made by a group of indigenous kids from the shantytowns above the city.  One of the most striking and picturesque elements of Bolivia, memorable to most tourists, are the cholitas or mulheres de pollera, women dressed in what one would be tempted to call "traditional indigenous clothing," but which is really an autochthonous, hybrid fashion with both European and Inca roots.

Though many tourists see the cholitas as picturesque, these women also inspire hidden laughter ("bowler hats?") and more open criticisms.  Dressing in pollera fashion is expensive, after all, and many observers have commented that in a country as poor as Bolivia, as mothers of extremely poor families, these women would do much better if they dedicated their scarce money to educating and feeding themselves and their families.  Amidst starvation and the biting cold of El Alto, the shantytown where most cholitas live, fashion seems an unpardonable luxury.

Let me step back a moment, though, before I continue.  The first time I visited Bolivia was in 1991, not terribly long ago in terms of major social changes.  At that time, I was struck by the frightening sadness of the indigenous people, their downcast eyes and stooped postures, the fact that indian women would step off the sidewalk into the muck of the street when a white person wanted to pass.  Cholita fashion existed, but mostly in the form of old bowler hats and ragged long dresses, nothing like the rich silks and satins in the photo here.

In the 1990s, cholita fashion went wild, with new fabrics and cuts, new hats, and even cholita pro-wrestling (another story entirely).  There was an unexpected result of this excess, however: proud of their clothes and their appearance, cholitas no longer dropped their eyes, no longer stooped their shoulders, and no longer ceded their place on the sidewalk.  Their fashion had transformed their bodies.  And within a few short years, this pride had political consequences: cholitas were at the forefront of the two peaceful revolutions that took down the corrupt and clientelistic governments of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in 2003 and Carlos Mesa in 2005.

I don't want to make any grand conclusion from this idea ("luxury is a necessity of revolution" or any such thing), but I do think the story challenges many of our basic assumptions about social change.  It often comes about by strange, torturous routes, and not by the straight line we thought would get us there.

The Flooded Plain/El Llano Inundado

The Flooded Plain came out of the same project as Life's Roulette, when several of the teenagers who had been child soldiers wanted to find a new way to teach about their experiences in the Colombian Civil War.  At one point in our discussions about the movie, one of the kids had complained that they suffered from extreme discrimination because of their life as soldiers, while "Everyone loves Harry Potter, and he's just a child soldier in the war against Voldemort."  As a result, three of the boys worked to transform their stories into young adult fantasy, presented as an on-line comic book. If the button above doesn't work, the English version is available here.

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El Llano Inundado surge del mismo proyecto como Ruleta de la Vida, cuando algunos de los adolescentes que habían sido niños soldados querían un nuevo medio para enseñar sobre sus experiencias en la Guerra Civil Colombiana.  En algún momento de nuestras conversaciones sobre la película que estábamos haciendo, un muchacho reclamó que ellos sufrieron mucha discriminación por su vida como soldados, mientras que "Todo el mundo ama a Harry Potter, quién no es más que un niño soldado en la guerra contra Voldemort."  Como resultado, tres de los muchachos trabajaron para transformar sus historias en una fantasía juvenil, presentado aquí como un comix online.  Versión en Español disponible aqui (edición de texto por Aida Ramos).

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Versão em Português (Tradução Sara Escalhão Gomes)

Funk dos Macaquinhos/The Little Monkey Funk

Tenho escutado esta música de crianças de todas as classes sociais no Brasil; alguns dos pais deles me falam que o programa da Xuxa a difunde.  Porém, acho que com um ritmo um pouco mais funk e a voz de Carlos Dias da Creche Comunitária Salgueiro (4 anos de idade), vai além da idiotice que passa por cultura infantil no programa da Xuxa.

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A quick English translation:

"Five little monkeys were jumping on the bed

One fell down and broke it's head

My mom called up the doctor who said,

No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"

I have seen a children's book with a similar poem in the United States, but I'm not sure if it came first, or this song, which almost every kid in Brazil knows.

En Busca de la Vida/Looking for Life (Episode 2)

Escribo este blog desde La Paz, Bolivia, donde estoy acompañando a los jóvenes cineastas que crearon En Busca de la Vida. Mañana, vamos a estrenar episodio seis, después de una larga pausa (creo que se dice hiatus en la industria televisiva...). Estoy impresionado con la manera que los muchachos han re-tomado la historia después de muchos problemas que pasaron en la producción el año pasado.

Para ver la actualización de la novela, es mejor visitar al blog de En Busca de la Vida, donde lo mantendré a la fecha.

O dia que sai de Casa/The Day I left Home

"The day I left home my mother told me,

Son, come here.

I give all of my prayers to God that you will be well.

She never understood my reasons for leaving home

But she knows that after it grows up,

A bird has wings and has to fly."

The song, recorded by Carlos Dias (age 4) at the Salguiero Community Pre-School in a favela close to Rio de Janeiro, says something profound about how seriously little children take going away to school, or even to day care.  It can be traumatic, but also noble, something of which they can be proud.

Carlos, Rita and I recorded the song on the playground behind the pre-school, and I later composed the music to fit his beautiful singing voice.  In the next couple of weeks, I will post more of Carlos's songs, as well as those of several of his friends.

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A música é bem conhecida, do filme Os Dois Filhos de Francisco, mas acho que Carlos Dias (4 anos de idade) o faz sua nesta interpretação.

Television Report on Child Soldiers

Amanda Massa and Rania Zabaneh did an excellent report on child soldiers for Columbia Television, which I reproduce here.  One of the interviews is with Ismael Beah, the famous ex-child soldier and now best selling author and human rights advocate.  The other is with Edwin Garzón, the star of Ruleta de la Vida/Life's Roulette, the first fictional, feature length film by child soldiers, made with Shine a Light in 2007-2008.

A Incrível História da Vovozinha e o Lobo Mau

Este filme foi o primeiro que fizemos no Projeto Transições, quando Rita e eu estivemos muito frustrados, incerto se o 
nosso experimento ensinando cinema a crianças pequenas ia dar fruto. Mas uma tarde, no parquinho, Bia tomou a cámara em mãos e começou a brincar. Quando virou o LED screen para poder se ver, escapou a frase "Quê grandes olhos que você tem!", e o resto -- com as variações na história por Hemillin e Carlos -- seguiu naturalmente.

Um pequeno fato para ajudar a intender a loucura criativa da terceira história: quando Carlos e a sua família migraram do 
nordeste para Rio de Janeiro, moraram por um tempo no elevador de um prédio abandonado.
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The echoes of gunshots had died down not long before, and most of the older kids at the pre-school in a favela just outside Rio de Janeiro were still nervous.  Everyone knew it was just one of the daily battles between gangs in the shantytown, but that knowledge provided little consolation.  Carlos, Beatriz, Emily, and Allan, all about 4 years old, saw a chance to have the playground to themselves, so they snuck out the back door and onto the swings, where Rita and I were revising the video some of the other kids had filmed earlier in the day.

Beatriz took the big camera in her hand and turned the viewscreen around so she could film and see herself at the same time.  One eye moved closer and closer to the lens as her other eye watched what was happening on the screen.  "What big eyes you have!" she declared, and then caught her own reference.  She smiled with the innocent genius that too many of us lose after that wonderful age of four years old, and completed the phrase: "The better to see you with, my dear."

A quick hint to help understand the crazy genius of the end of the story: When Carlos and his family moved from Brazil's poor northeast to Rio de Janeiro, they lived for a time in the elevator of an abandoned building.

En Busca de la Vida/Looking for Life

In Latin America, the telenovela is one of the most popular and pervasive art forms. These television shows are often 
compared to American soap operas because of their focus on love, family, and their often melodramatic approach to 
representing quotidian problems. Telenovelas differ from the soap opera in several major ways, though, particularly their pervasiveness -- almost everyone watches them, because they come on in prime time -- the gender of their audiences -- as much male as female -- and their ideological impact. With several notable exceptions, telenovelas from Brazil to Mexico present the world through the eyes of the upper class, presenting wealth as the only reasonable goal in the world.

A group of young indigenous Bolivians, fans of many telenovelas but not of the consequences these TV shows have on 
their communities, which present the poor as having worth only because of their relationship with the rich. So they decided to make a "telenovela from the bottom" (or, perhaps, given that they live in the shantytown of El Alto, at 14,000 feet, 
"from above"). En Busca de la Vida/Looking for Life uses the tropes of the telenovela to tell a very different story, one 
about hope and resistance.

Today's post is the first episode, as the children and teenagers were learning to film and tell stories. I'm now in Bolivia, 
filming episodes 6-15, and they have now reached a level that is nearly professional, and certainly better than any other 
telenovela I have seen in Bolivia. The show has its own blog, where I have posted several more episodes (the 
commentaries are in Spanish, but the episodes have English subtitles) and its own YouTube Channel.

Theater of War, Cinema of Peace

In 2007, Shine a Light collaborated with the Colombian NGO Taller de Vida to develop the first feature-length, fictional film ever made by children who once were soldiers.  The result, Ruleta de la Vida/Life's Roulette, is a powerful movie that has now been shown at film festivals on four continents, and has won some important prizes.  Perhaps more significantly, while on average more than half of children who leave the war return to it, none of the kids who made Life's Roulette have returned to an illegal armed group.  Almost all of them are studying, doing well, and many even continue to work in cinema or social justice movements.

Over the last several years, I have been reflecting on the experience of making the movie and trying to see why it was such an effective tool for art, social change, and personal growth.  Those reflections, mediated through contemporary philosophy and film theory, became Theater of War, Cinema of Peace, a book just published on the Shine a Light website.  You can download it for free at http://www.shinealight.org/Books.html

A Barata Yazmin/Yazmin the Cockroach

A Barata Yazmin surge do mesmo projeto como A Varinha Mágica, e conta uma história inventada pela turma pré-escolar da Creche Comunitária Salguiero, em São Gonçalo, perto ao Rio de Janeiro. Kevin, o menino que narra a história no 
vídeo, sempre tinha muito medo àsbaratas, mas um dia, em caminho para a creche, ele pegou uma barata na rua e o levou 
para conhecer aos seus amigos. A professora da turma, Catarina de Oliveira, queria aproveitar do evento inédito, e ajudou à turma a fazer um livro onde cada criança desenhava um evento nahistória. Depois da criação do livro, eu digitalizei as 
imagens e as animei.

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Yazmin the Cockroach comes from the same project as The Magic Wand, telling a story created by the pre-school class at 
the Salguiero community pre-school. Kevin, the four-year old who narrates the video, had always been terrified of 
cockroaches, but one day, unexpectedly, he found a roach on the way to school and brought it to meet his friends. The 
teacher, Catarina de Oliveira, seeing a unique teaching opportunity, asked each of the kids to draw a page for a book, 
telling the story of one event that day. I then scanned the pictures and animated the children's drawings.

If you can't see the subtitles in English, run your mouse over the little triangle to the lower right of the movie, and you 
should be able to call them up.

A Varinha Mágica/The Magic Wand

Nos últimos meses, Shine a Light vai desenvolvendo novas técnicas de comunicar a criatividade e arte de crianças da 
periferia. A Varinha Mágica basa-se nas histórias da turma pré-escolar da Creche Comunitária Salguiero, na cidade de São Gonçalo, perto ao Rio de Janeiro.

A história começa com uma das tragêdias quotidianas que toca na vida de uma criança: um brinquedinho -- neste caso, 
uma vara que Carlos achou em caminha à creche -- se quebrou. Porém, as outras crianças descobrem que a vara quebrada é mágica. Acho que a história motra algo profundo sobre a criatividade infantil e como a magia está sempre presente nas 
suas vidas.

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Over the last several months, Shine a Light has developed new tools for communicating the creativity and art of 
marginalized children. The Magic Wand, based on a story from a group of pre-schoolers from São Gonçalo, near Rio de 
Janeiro, shows how animation technology can capture something of the genius of children's thinking.

The story begins with one of a child's daily tragedies: a toy breaks. In this case, it is a stick that Carlos found on the way 
to school, but when it broke, he was still sad. Fortunately, the other kids in the class soon discovered that the broken stick was really a magic wand that could turn itself into anything they could imagine.

If you can't see the subtitles in English, run your mouse over the little triangle to the lower right of the movie, and you should be able to call them up.

About Shine a Light

Latin American civil society has developed extraordinary solutions for marginalized children, from national political movements to top-notch ballet troupes. Unfortunately, institutional and national barriers have prevented these programs from learning from each other: the problem is not a lack of solutions, but a lack of communication. SAL uses digital technology to democratize this intellectual capital, connecting community based programs with each other so that no one need reinvent the wheel.

Over ten years of work, we have become the largest collaborative network of grassroots organizations serving marginalized children in the world and have impacted education and social services for over two million children and families.

Shine a Light collaborates with the most creative NGOs in Latin America to develop and disseminate best practices with marginalized children. We teach children the digital arts -- cinema, photography, music composition, graphic design, etc -- and then help them to teach others, whether educators at other programs, other children, or the general population.