[Brazil@Harvard] Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite) - TODAY at the HFA

Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite) Film screening will be followed by a panel discussion with director José Padilha and scholars José Gatti and James Cavallaro. Date: Monday, May 5, 2008 Time: 7:00 pm Location: Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge Presented with the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at HKS, The Harvard Film Archive, and the Harvard University Brazil Studies Program at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Fore More Information: http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2008mayjune/elite.html Synopsis: Elite Squad has been a media event in Brazil since the first pirated copies of the workprint started circulating. It was an instant success upon its Brazilian release last fall and burst onto the international scene by winning top prize at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. The film is an adaptation of a book by the same name written by anthropologist Luiz Eduardo Soares (the former national secretary of public security in Brazil) and two police officers, André Batista and Rodrigo Pimentel. The book recounts the experiences of Batista and Pimentel as officers in the Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais, the Special Police Operations Battalion of the Rio de Janeiro Military Police. Soares is the former national secretary of public security in Brazil. Both the film and the book show police brutality and corruption, as well as the violence of drug traffickers, through the eyes and the voice of a policeman involved in a world where the war on crime itself becomes criminal. -- Marcio Siwi Fellow / Program Officer Brazil Studies Program Harvard University David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies 1730 Cambridge St. Cambridge, MA 02138 tel (617) 495-5435 http://drclas.harvard.edu/brazil