Director Leandro HBL teamed up with music producer and Dj Diplo and film producer Amiten to bring the project to life.
FAVELA ON BLAST reveals the particular universe of funk, a world composed by characters of remarkable talents and notorious “inadequacies”, in addition to the baile funk as a place of interaction between its goers: funkers, DJ’s and MC’s. This mixture of bodies, sounds, colors and cultures are laden with meaningful images that will lead the viewer into the funk world, presenting “intra-worlds” of these characters in the favela (or outside), to the extent that the events are revealed on the screen.
The popular culture of favelas, that dialogues intensely with the cultural industry, is generally viewed by media in a schematic and prejudiced way. The vision of the traditional media usually prevents us from understanding phenomena extremely important in contemporary society. The funk carioca is a very rich example of how cultural elements from various sources are a dynamo of constant cultural reconstruction – even, and especially, coming from places labeled as “marginal”. The baile funk, born amid violence and poverty of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro, is probably one of the most interesting musical movements in the world. Create the documentary FAVELA ON BLAST means bringing Baile Funk, its music, its characters and, above all, the socio-cultural reality of favelas to a truthfully cinema, without prejudice or labelings.