O Zelador - Street capoeira in Rio

Street capoeira clip from the documentary O Zelador

After singing the praises of O Zelador - a remarkable film about capoeira in Rio De Janeiro - to a good friend and long standing capoeirista, he grinned, said he’d met Master Russo, the inspirational focus of the film, and insisted I meet the film maker: “He lives nearby… he’s based in Brick Lane.”

It turns out that Daren Bartlett was one of the people who I’d regularly watch practicing Capoeira Angola in Hoxton Square back in the 1990s and on the day I catch up with him he’s fresh from a training session in Brazilian Jujitsu under the supervision of Mestre Roger Gracie - several times World Champion. Not surprisingly, the follow up to Daren’s evocative and educational O Zelador is to be a film about the Gracie family – the dynasty that has established a global reputation for Brazilian Jujitsu.

It was following a motor cycle crash that Daren found himself in Brazil. He had recorded music for Mo’ Wax and was toying with becoming a film maker. In Rio he began playing capoeira with a young, middle class crowd happy to be on the fringes of Afro Brazilian culture. But then, one day, Mestre Russo (the Russian) walked into the academy.

“He was like a pirate!” exclaimed Daren and it was an encounter that was to shape his life for the next five years. Visiting Russo’s home and family in Baixada Fluminense, a forgotten and lawless favela on the outskirts of Rio, was a shocking cultural experience even for a streetwise East End boy. But it also opened his eyes to how the music and songs, the physical agility, self-defence and cultural philosophy of the Afro-Brazilian manifestation had helped this “organic academic who had left school at eight” endure a life of poverty and danger.

Daren clearly made an impression on Russo. The man was adamant that he leave the academy to study with them. The budding film maker couldn’t believe his luck. He had been elevated, through Baixada Fluminense, into Rio’s famous capoeira street roda (circle) in Caxias. It was that roda which has produced many of the great capoeira masters teaching outside of Brazil.

Mestre Russo was one of the youths who founded the roda in Caxias and he is the one who chose to stay. Today, he is regarded as its caretaker (zelador). Daren explains: “For him, only capoeira exists. If you discriminate against a style of capoeira you can discriminate against anything. He never takes charge but he’s always been in the centre of things. He reflects a very pure vein of thinking.”

Mestre Russo playing capoeira in the Caixas street roda

Through extensive research, the film takes us on a journey through the years of Brazil’s military dictatorship and the attempts to formalise capoeira, thereby sanitising its history, its roots in slavery, and restricting the art’s multi dimensional nature. The capoeiristas of Caxias were not to be bound by formality. Their academy was the street and as outcasts readily accepted any challenges.

This film documents the Russo’s life as a father, husband and capoeirista and it illuminates his role in a community that despite the gruelling poverty has recalibrated itself to be rich in other ways. There is a love and tactility, that shines through, and nowhere in the film is it more moving than the interviews with Russo’s wife, Eliane.

“She knows more about capoeira than anyone,” laughs Daren. She might not practice but, as she says in the film, she has had to share her passion, her love affair with Russo with his first wife – capoeira.

Through making O Zelador, Daren Bartlett honed both his capoeira and his film making skills. It was a labour of love rewarded by taking Russo and Eliane to view the film when it was officially selected for the Sao Paulo International Film Festival in 2008. Capoeira is a story as old as Brazil, and it is beautifully told here.

Paul Bradshaw / Straight No Chaser
Photo credit - Stephane Munnier

O Zelador: A Story Of Capoeira
Directed by Daren Bartlett [UK, 2008]
Running time: 85 minutes
Subtitles: English

www.o-zelador.com

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