Arts & Entertainment
Sao Paolo Nightmare
Award-winning documentary gives lesson in class warfare.
Naomi Pfefferman
Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.
I
n
Manda Bala, Jason Kohn's night-
marish documentary of Brazil, a
young woman describes how a
"secret admirer" kept phoning her home
in Sao Paolo. But when she went to meet
him, the flattery was a ruse to kidnap her
and hold her for ransom. She was chained
inside a box, and her ears were sliced off
and sent to her father as a Father's Day
present.
"I only knew it was night or day because
of the TV:" the woman says in the movie.
"The Birds, by Alfred Hitchcock, was on
the day they cut my first ear. That night I
dreamed that a bird had bitten my ear off.
I still have that dream today."
In Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), Kohn
portrays a dystopian nation where the rich
steal from the poor and the poor literally
"steal" the rich. The "characters" include a
politician who allegedly stole billions from
a poverty fund, a frog farmer who alleg-
edly laundered the money, a kidnapper
who uses ransom loot to help his commu-
nity and a businessman so afraid of being
kidnapped that he wants a microchip
implanted in his body as a sort of human
LoJack.
The movie won best documentary and
documentary cinematography awards at
the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and "is as
well directed as a thriller," according to a
review in the Hollywood Reporter.
"Once you get past the gore, which takes
many forms — from frogs eating each
other to a long sequence in a plastic sur-
geon's theater as he restores a cut-off ear
— Manda Bala makes a powerful state-
ment about the consequences of wanting
the good life at any cost!'
The brisk, brash documentary is to be
expected of Kohn, 28, who describes him-
self as a New York "leftie Jew" and, above
all, a "radical atheist!' He lives in a small
apartment in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen
and does not own a home telephone (he
uses his cell).
His connection to Brazil comes from
his South American emigre parents, who
forced him to attend a Conservative reli-
gious school, which he despised because
even as a child he did not believe in God.
"But some of my favorite heroes come
48
September 20 e 2007
Magrinho, criminal leader of a slum in Sao Paolo, turned from robbing banks to kidnapping because it was more profitable.
from a certain tradition of secular intel-
lectual Jews who have changed the world
for the better: Karl Marx, Albert Einstein,
Sigmund Freud:' he says.
Kohn grew up working in his family's
store near Times Square, which catered to
Brazilian tourists. But the seeds of Manda
Bala came later, after his parents divorced
and Jason began visiting his father's new
home in Sao Paolo.
"In America, my father was just another
middle-class guy, but in Brazil, he lived
[lavishly]," the filmmaker says. "Not only
did he have a maid, but everyone had a
maid, and many people had two maids. I
was fascinated that people were driving
around in bullet-proof cars!'
From the balcony of a relative's apart-
ment, Kohn could see sprawling slums just
beside a wealthy enclave of sleek high-rise
apartments. After Kohn graduated from
Brandeis University with degrees in his-
tory and film in 2001, his father told him
about the "frog farm" scandal. Around
the same time, Kohn read a newspaper
story about a Sao Paolo plastic surgeon
who specialized in ears. Kohn flew down
to Brazil to visit the frog farm, where he
noted that the larger amphibians ate the
smaller ones — an image he felt might
work in a film about class warfare.
He discussed the idea with his mentor,
the eccentric documentarian Errol Morris,
for whom he was working as a research
assistant.
"The story had crime, mutilation, can-
nibalism and the potential for metaphor,
which fascinated Errol:' Kohn says. "He
suggested that I see this brutal French
film, I Stand Alone, which was shot in
16mm film with anamorphic lenses — a
good way to shoot a very wide-looking
movie cheaply. I thought that might help
me [depict] Sao Paolo as the kind of
futuristic, anti-utopian city you might see
in a science fiction film!'
In 2002, Kohn left his job, sold his car
and moved down to Sao Paolo to try to
make his movie.
It was a rash move, since he was only 22,
didn't have much money and didn't know
any Brazilian politicians. But he knew
some of his father's friends within Sao
Paolo's tight-knit Jewish community, and
he slowly began to make contacts. A police
detective introduced Kohn to the young
woman whose ears became a Father's Day
present, and authorities gave Kohn torture
videos that had been sent to other victims'
families.
By April 2006, Kohn had cut his film,
but he still lacked the ending he had
envisioned — an interview with a real
kidnapper.
"I was depressed, broke and basically
living on my stepbrother's bed:' he recalls.
A break came when a cabbie offered
to introduce Kohn to a kidnapper who
served as the "don" of a local slum. Several
days later, the cabbie drove Kohn and his
crew to the thug's compound — a block of
shacks surrounded by walls and equipped
with an elaborate security system.
The 35-year-old criminal, Magrinho,
was relaxed and affable during the two-
hour interview, describing how he began
stealing food for his family at age 9 and
how he turned from bank robbing to kid-
napping because it was more profitable.
"You either steal with a gun or with a pen
— politicians steal with a pen:' he says in
the movie.
The interview was cut short, however,
when security monitors showed police
entering the slum and rushing toward
Magrinho's compound. The kidnapper
grabbed his gun as the filmmakers cow-
ered in a trash-filled courtyard.
"I thought he'd assume we had brought
the police, in which case we would all have
been executed on the spot:' Kohn says.
But it turned out the police had come
only to extort bribes from Magrinho, and
when they didn't find him on the streets,
they left.
Even though Manda Bala is largely set
in Sao Paolo, Kohn believes the movie is
universal.
"It is as much about present-day Brazil
as it could be about the United States in
five years:' he says. 1-1
Manda Bala opens Friday, Sept. 21,
at the Landmark Maple Art Theatre
in Bloomfield Township. Call (248)
263-2111.