O Zelador

Just the other day I was revisiting my Facebook photo albums and got nostalgic over a bunch of pictures I took during a recent trip to Rio de Janeiro. For my birthday last year, I decided to treat myself and visit one of my best friends, whom I hadn’t seen in a couple of years and now works for a major fashion company there. (I’ll surely come back for the World Cup in 2014, and maybe even the Olympics two years after that.)

What happens in Rio, stays in Rio, but there are certain memories I’ll carry with me forever, like how on our first night, when we were headed to a club in Leblon, we stopped to watch a group of capoeira dancers dressed in white and fully engaged in a street roda.

A new documentary by director Daren Bartlett, O Zelador, out now on DVD, explores the life of 50-year-old Master Russo, one of the pioneers of this Afro-Brazilian cultural manifestation centered around music, physical agility, and self-defense. Hailing from Rio de Janeiro’s terrifying Baixada Fluminense hood, Russo first discovered the power of capoeira at age 11, after having lost his father. Every Sunday after that, he’s participated in a traditional street roda, or a circle around which people gather to sing, dance, (play) fight, and honor their ancestry.

Having survived a life of abject poverty and outlived military dictatorships during the 70s and 80s that tried to suppress the povo (people), Russo continues to be an inspiration to modern capoeira disciples and a “zelador” or caretaker, of this unique art form.

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