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[footsteps tapping]
- [exhales heavily]
I love when I start a day
and I really don't know where it's gonna take me.
[soft vocal music]
Waking up every day in a different country,
creating projects...
Never really looking back, just being in the action.
Action, action, action.
Maybe that's why I've always been documenting it...
To keep a trace of it.
The excuse of the art is the greatest path ever.
[bricks crashing]
I'm actually kind of shy
and can be afraid to talk to people.
But when I do a project, I have to explain,
"I come here by myself, with my own money,
"to try to do this project here with you,
in your community, if it makes sense to you."
And then, of course, some people ask,
"Yeah, but what is this going to achieve?"
I always say, "I don't know. Let's see."
It's almost like if we do a pact of the unknown:
"Okay, we're gonna do this,
but I have no idea where it's gonna take us."
- And your ID right here one more time.
- Thank you.
[indistinct chatter]
[clears throat]
[indistinct chatter]
[buzzer blares]
[indistinct chatter]
So here I am, supermax prison,
to meet some inmates that have been incarcerated
when they were teenagers,
mainly because of the three-strike law.
This is level four, maximum security level four,
and so a lot of the most violent.
Damn. What, someone got stabbed?
- Yeah, they wanted to try to clean it up
before you guys got here, but they didn't do it.
- That was when?
- That was two days ago, apparently.
- Wow.
- Hey. - Hello, hello.
Hey. How are you? - Welcome.
I'm JR.
Hey, how are you? - Hey, what's up?
I come from France.
I'll try to remember every name, guys,
but, like, you gotta give me a minute.
How are you? JR.
[clears throat]
Well, thank you for having me.
What we're about to do here is, I take photos of you guys
and also photos of people who made it out
and also families of people who have forgiven,
people who have connected with some people in here,
and so--to try to connect all the dots
to show how everyone is interlinked together.
We're not here to judge anything.
We're here to listen to the story
and to portray you the way you want to be portrayed.
But my feeling, just from being from the outside--
that's why I really need to hear it from you--
is that this is kind of how it feel here.
Like, being between walls,
it feels like almost everyone
is, like, dropped in the same hole.
And I want to make that as a visual
so that when people see, they understand it.
Well, I'd love to hear from you what you think,
if you have any questions for me.
What--you know, how can I,
you know, help make things clearer?
What--you know, any questions, basically, I'm open.
- What it is that you're trying to--like,
what is it that you're trying to accomplish with this?
That's my question.
- The thing is, I didn't even know
that someone can be locked up when he was a kid for life.
In my country, I never heard that.
Maybe in the U.S., people know.
But people tend to forget.
By not seeing each other, by not--
then you tend to forget.
Everybody goes into their own thing,
and then you get forgotten.
But when you see and you put a face and a story to someone,
then you're like--well, you can't forget it anymore.
Look, I don't make fake promises.
I'm not a politician, you know.
I'm always very careful with my words.
But I'll give you an example.
It's interesting when you work on walls,
people are always coming to me, "Oh, you should do this wall."
Well, there's a wall that I keep hearing.
So one day, I say, "All right, let's take the car."
I went with my friends. We just drove there.
[demon's "riddim in the park"]
- How you guys doing? - Good. How are you?
- Good. And you?
Yeah, we're just checking out the wall.
- Yeah. - Oh, checking out the wall?
- They just wanted to see it.
- Yeah. - What wall?
- Oh. [laughter]
- You guys see a wall anywhere?
- Fence. - The fence, the fence. Sorry.
- Yeah, that's been there for a long time.
- Yeah. - Where you guys live?
- Oh, no, we're French. We just--
I mean, he's American, we're French, so we just--
- Step out.
- Yeah. [speaking french]
- Oh, do you need me to pull up?
- Yeah.
- Hi. - How's it going?
- Good. How are you?
- Pretty good. Where you guys heading?
- Just gonna take some pictures of the wall.
- Yeah. - The wall?
- Or the fence. Whatever. Yeah. - Fence.
Okay. Have a good time. - Okay.
- Thank you. - Thanks.
[somber music]
- I wanted to find a place
where I could do an installation
that would play with the wall but not touch the wall.
I found a place where we can drive in front of the wall.
But on the U.S. side,
Border Patrol is everywhere, helicopters flying.
I'm like, "Okay, this doesn't look
like an easy place to do something."
And then I look on the other side,
and I see some houses close by the wall,
actually not that far.
So we go past the border.
And then I go to the closest house from the wall,
because I'm like, "Oh, maybe I could
paste something on that house."
And I knock at that door.
Well, there was this woman and two old people,
little baby and two chickens and a dog.
And she looked at me, and she's like,
"Oh, I follow you on social media."
That's insane--the first door I bang, you know?
That's really weird.
So I'm like, "All right, look, you know me.
I do this kind of stuff."
So she takes me to that spot
that's the closest from the fence.
But it's trees and stuff, so I'm like, "Ah, okay,
"I see it's a bit complicated for me to do it there.
"So look, thank you.
Let me continue driving alongside the wall."
I kept on going all the way to the ocean.
I'm like, "Shit.
"That kid, he don't know what a fence is.
"He don't know that there is two countries,
"that there is two sides.
He don't know what that wall means."
So I go back, and all I did
is photograph him standing in the crib,
looking around him like that.
And then I left.
And we look around, down the little hill
that go up to the wall.
There's nothing.
It's just grass and garbage here and there.
So I'm like, "Okay, whose land is this?
So I ask every neighbor: "Hey, excuse me, sir.
You know whose land is that?" "You know, I don't know.
I don't want to have anything to do with it."
"All right, that's all I need to hear."
I go to the next neighbor:
"Hey, man, do you know whose land is this?"
Some people wouldn't even open the door.
Like, "What do you want? No."
So what do you do?
My only option was, let's rent a bulldozer.
[laughter]
Anyone can rent a bulldozer.
They'll deliver it to whatever address.
So I started digging the ground.
And I was like, "All right, what are the risks for me,
"as a French person in Mexico,
digging a ground next to-- next to the border?"
Well, I'm not digging a hole under it.
I'm just, like, flattening it.
So maybe the Mexicans will come first and say,
"Hey, man, you can't do that here.
Are you crazy?"
And I would be, "Oh, I'm so sorry."
And we start one day, two days, three days--for, like, 15 days.
No one says anything, and we level the ground.
I couldn't believe it. I was like, "What the fuck?
Who is in charge here?"
So then I go to a place to rent scaffolding.
[indistinct chatter]
"All right, if you pay, we'll build it.
You know, we don't ask questions."
[tools banging]
[all speaking spanish]
[laughter]
[dynamic music]
- It's bigger than the wall.
It's three times the size of the wall.
Let's see if the Border Patrol stop us.
I come with my team, and we paste that little kid.
There I was like, "Okay,
"maybe that's where I'm gonna lose everything,
"because Border Patrol is gonna start saying,
"'There's something big being built by the wall.
We should do something about it.'"
- [speaking spanish]
- In one day, we pasted the entire structure.
And I was like, "Okay, let's get out of here."
And I passed back on the other side
and stumbled on those two Border Patrol
that was just looking at the kid.
And I just put on Internet.
I say, "Hey, whoever wants to go see that kid,
here is the location."
That's all I say.
One of the great things that art do is,
if you build a giant kid somewhere, people will say,
"Ah, that's a fun thing. I'll go see that.
Let's go take a selfie in front of it."
That's where my idea start.
I hope people go and take photos
so they'll see the wall.
It's the same land, but we're on each side.
And what happened is something I haven't planned.
People exchanging their phones through the wall
to take photos of each other, connecting, talking:
"Hey, how are you?"
The Border Patrol should be, "Wait, wait, wait.
"They could be passing drugs,
"or they could be passing weapons.
Let's go arrest those people."
After three weeks, no one got arrested.
How the fuck people don't get arrested
for passing stuff through the wall?
Because I know there's guys on the hills
overlooking every second.
After one month of seeing that,
I had to give back the scaffolding.
We decided to go and to organize a table
that would go through the wall.
[dramatic music]
We built a table, 36 feet on each side.
Yes, we would block the road a little bit on the U.S. side,
'cause the table will end up on the road.
A few days later, we got a letter
from the Border Patrol saying that they strongly recommend
keeping the table on the Mexican side only.
We continued, but we had to improvise
another way of building the table from the U.S. side.
And then we invited people to come
and see Kikito for the last time.
[indistinct chatter]
People on the Mexican side all started sitting,
and we started making food,
but there was nobody on the other side,
'cause we couldn't build a table.
Hello. How are you?
- We're from Germany.
- Ah, from Germany. Wow. Amazing.
You know we're doing a lunch thing.
- Can't go to the other side.
- As soon as people would come to take photos, we told them,
"Hey, if you can stay a little bit longer."
After, like, an hour or an hour and a half,
there was maybe 20, 30 people,
and we passed them a tarp.
And then we're like, "Okay, maybe we only have
a couple minutes, so we let's go fast."
Table on the Mexican side that continue on the U.S. side.
And one music band plays in two sides.
[upbeat music playing]
Half of the band was in Mexico,
the other half was in the U.S.,
but it was the same band.
They were playing the same music.
We would pass tacos that we made in Mexico
through the wall.
We passed them illegal tacos.
So now I'm thinking,
"We're gonna get arrested in five minutes.
"Let's just pretend we're eating
so I can take a photo."
Everybody gather around the table.
We're gonna take a photo from above.
[speaking spanish]
You ready? Cinco. Quatro.
all: Tres. Dos. Uno.
all: Whoo!
[soft music]
- You know, from up there, there's no wall.
We thought this would last two minutes,
that we would put the tarp and take a photo,
and that's it; we have to take everything up.
And 5 minute passed, 10 minute passed,
15, 20, 30, one hour, we're still eating.
It was just a nice lunch with music.
And for a moment, we really forgot there was a wall.
This is the eye of a woman who's a Dreamer.
Dreamer is someone who had come to the United States
when she was very little
with her parents but illegally.
Her name is Mayra.
I told her not to come, 'cause they say
there's a big chance we'll get arrested.
But not only she came; she came with her mother.
- With DACA ending, I have very few months left
being able to be this brave and come to the border.
- It's only an hour and a half later,
then the Border Patrol came.
Everybody got scared.
I told them, "All right, send him over to me."
I was on the safe side. I was in Mexico anyway.
I was not even trying to justify myself.
I said, "Look," you know. And he said, "I know. I know."
Turns out, they were watching us the whole time
but had decided to let it happen.
Thank you. Can you share tea with me?
- Sure.
- Salud. Thank you.
- Thank you.
- A Chinese tea at the Mexican border.
How's that? [laughter]
He went and talked with Mayra.
When she came that morning,
we never thought she would be talking with an officer.
And he told her that he also had family on the other side.
And they were talking.
That made me realize that art can go places beyond laws,
beyond rules, beyond borders.
Maybe because art is not part of any organization.
It's not part of the state.
It's something that we own-- we, the people, own.
And that's why it goes so far.
- That little kid say, "Hey, I'm here!
I'm exist!" [laughter]
"I'm not terrorist!"
- A future, a better future,
that's what it means for me.
[flashbulb popping] - Yeah.
Nice, and now looking down in front of you.
Yeah, perfect.
I like when you hold it there.
Nice.
- You certainly, as a kid, don't think of this,
that you're gonna do life in prison, as a kid,
doing the things that you've done.
You know, there's a lot of fences and walls in here
to keep us in, but it does more than that.
It destroys who we are, destroys our families.
- You were a, what, graffiti artist before?
- Yeah. Yeah.
- That's funny, 'cause I kind of started off,
you know, kind of into that little lifestyle.
- Oh, yeah?
- The only difference is that my transition kind of ending up
going a different, you know, way after.
- 14 years, you had no human contact.
- No, just when they cuff you up...
- Yeah. - And they take you out.
That's it.
[somber music]
- Still can't really believe those--
those human cages.
Insane.
Well, here the bird gets free in the human cages.
We hope that this image will get around the world.
People will see. - Definitely.
- And then they'll be like, "Okay, who is that person?"
And actually, when you take the image
and you put your hand on any person,
you can hear their story right away.
- Wow, that's awesome.
- We're putting, like, an app for this
or something that you can click on, you know,
and then you hear the stories of the people.
- My name's Kevin. I was a gang member.
I put my whole life and focus
into what I was doing at the moment.
Really, I was just trying to, like,
people-please other people.
I knew that this wasn't what I wanted,
but I was scared.
I'm not the person that you see.
How do you say that you're a loving person
with this on my face, you know?
And I was trying to explain, like, what it was.
I mean, it was a prison thing, and it's not really, like,
how, like, I perceive other people, you know?
- Yeah.
- And it made me feel really ashamed.
- Yeah. Yeah, like that. That's great.
- I'm not just a monster that society sees me as.
I'm a person. I'm a man. I'm a human.
- Hello, outside world. My name's Richard.
- My name is Nicholas.
- My name is Raul Cios. - My name is Frankie Vasquez.
- My name is Francisco Olivares.
- My name's Yang. - My name's Chris.
- My name is Carlton Fields. - My name's Alejandro Serrano.
- My name is Alex.
[soft music]
- The biggest mountains and walls we have to pass
are within ourselves.
They're not in front of us.
When I see a guy with swastika on his face,
of course that's, like, a instant wall and fear.
But when Kevin, the guy with the swastika,
walked up for me to photograph him,
I was like, "Wow, if I don't ask him now,
"when in my life I would have the opportunity to ask,
"'Hey, man, can I ask you what the fuck is this?'
You know?"
Of course I have fear.
Also have boundaries.
My work every day push me to fight them.
- Come around. Come around this side and paint your face.
Go, go, go, go, go.
- All right, guys, let's keep the rhythm.
- I need some glue here.
- In between lines, that's the most important,
'cause that's where the wind will get it and fuck it up.
- Yeah.
- Oh, you see the first eye and ear.
- What's going on? - Look at that.
- That's his eye. He says that's his.
- That's yours? Yes. First one up.
[indistinct chatter]
- If you see anything weird in here, just...
[indistinct chatter]
- Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Go all the way, all the way, all the way.
- Right here? Right here? - Yeah.
- Are you in there? - Yeah, right here.
- That's right, you? Oh, my God.
- Right here. - [laughs]
Cassie, what are you doing?
Yeah? She got the dream team.
Come on, come on, come on.
Keep the rhythm, guys.
Every line, every line.
How is it doing here?
No line, no line, no line. Where's the crack?
- Running low on glue.
- Get cracking, boys.
- Those cracks, those cracks.
Every detail like that adds something, actually.
You know, people think it's done on the computer.
Bringing you some extras. [laughs]
- Just make sure that that glue is just right flat, Captain.
- Out of everything, I never thought I would see this.
- Teamwork, dream work.
- Oh, come on, I got wind. I got wind. Come on.
Oh, come on.
[indistinct chatter]
- Let's go!
- That's the way. That's the way.
The guys cleaned the yard yesterday.
They say they cleaned the blood.
They cleaned the tear gas. - Yeah.
- It's hard to imagine there's violence
every day on this yard.
- Yeah.
- How many guys you saw being stabbed here?
- It's 11 years' worth.
You know, I was raised here.
I never really imagined that one day, you could get out
and do something that you're never even gonna believe.
And the more we think like that,
the more we're gonna be able to obtain those dreams.
You know, people want to be this big
from way up there.
Know what I mean? We could see it.
We want to be that big from way up there.
And it doesn't take much.
Just a little hope, a little effort, and we got it.
- And some paper. - And some paper.
[laughter]
- That's the crew right there.
[laughs]
Pizza time. Pizza. - Pizza time.
- So I'm back in here.
Oh, my God, look at these shadows.
Let's turn this way. With Kevin.
- How's it going? - Good. And you?
- Good.
- I put the portrait I took of you, you know,
and--on social media,
and people were like, "Oh."
They were really-- I think people
were touched by your photo
because of the depth in your eyes
and what you share
and conflicted because of... - Yeah.
- Your tattoo on your cheek.
- Right, I understand that the symbols I wear
represent hate to many people,
and so people are automatically gonna have
a conflict with that.
When we come in here,
we're forced to fight for our lives...
- Yeah. - Against other races.
I know it causes a lot of hurt in other people's hearts.
And I know that if I could right now,
I would remove it, you know what I mean, and--
- So if I find someone who help remove it...
- Let's do it. - Let's do it? Okay.
- Let's do it, dude. - So if anyone's out there,
we're looking for someone who can help to remove this.
- Please. I need that. - All right?
[indistinct chatter]
- Hard day's work.
- We did it. - We did it, yeah.
- My buddy Richie over there. Look at him smiling over there.
- Just kicking it, man.
I'm just having a good time. - Just kicking it.
- I'm just the old guy right here, hanging out,
having a good time, enjoying this, soaking this in.
This is something,
in my 25 years of being busted in CDC,
I never thought I'd ever see:
a collective group of individuals
just come together for one purpose.
- You water the garden at home, you know what I mean.
- You got Mexicans working with Blacks and whites
and everybody together, interacting.
It's rare in--it's rare in the prison system.
But for us to break that mold is big.
It just shows everybody's willing to put all the hate
and all the negativity behind us and work together
with staff and everybody for a common goal,
you know what I mean?
[drone buzzing]
- Oh, that's, like, a-- that's, like, a little plane.
- I thought it was, like, a bird, though.
This is the first time we ever seen a drone live like this.
- You see? - Hey, check it out.
- Yeah! - Yeah!
- Whoa!
- Aw, hell yeah. - That was cool.
- Oh, that is so cool!
- That's incredible.
- [laughs] I see it right there, man.
- Oh, that's so cool.
- Congrats, everybody.
[applause]
Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
- Thank you. - Yeah, thank you, man.
[indistinct chatter]
- Yo, yo, yo, what you doing?
- I'm trying to keep my eye. - [laughs]
- I don't want to take it off the ground.
I want to leave it there. I want it to stay.
But as I'm tearing it, it felt good.
I felt, like, something freeing, right?
The process is what matter.
I think that's what art is. It was that process.
It wasn't just, oh, we took a picture,
or we drew a picture, or we sang a song.
It was--man, that whole process
of us being together and doing something,
it's kind of beautiful and affected me,
so I think that's art.
That's what I learned from you artists.
- The process is what matter.
It took me years to realize that,
and he was just realizing it in a heartbeat.
It stayed with me, because that reassured me
I was keeping the right part of that whole journey.
Whew!
[exhales heavily]
What's up, what's up, everyone?
We're here in Paris, the top of
Pshew! Boom.
People always think graffiti just started, but look at this.
Those are all graffiti from 1918, 1914,
1846, 1923,
and there's tons of people who want to exist and express
and be seen and be remembered.
I relate to that.
Growing up in the project outside Paris,
I was only doing graffiti,
writing my names everywhere I can,
the tunnels, on the rooftops.
[mysterious string music]
It's not that I had to escape by the window.
My parents were sleeping on the couch in the living room.
They would just leave me the freedom.
As a child of immigrants,
I come from a family that never had a voice.
I feel like I'm leaving a mark,
because I would see.
No one else would care, but then my friend would say,
"Oh, yeah, yeah, I saw. You made that rooftop."
One day, I was just at a train station in Paris
waiting for my friend, and he was late.
And at some point, I see the bag that was there.
After two, three train, that bag was still there.
So I open, and I see this camera.
I took it.
[camera shutter clicking]
And I had that idea of, like,
"I should document those adventures."
[camera shutter clicks]
[smooth electronic music]
I was documenting everything.
I was documenting climbing those roofs.
I was documenting those night experiences.
And I loved it.
I would just make photocopies of it,
and I would just give it to the people I photograph.
Then I was like, "Ah, I have those photocopies in hand.
"Well, you know what?
I can just paste one on the wall."
But my photos were really small,
so you wouldn't really notice them.
So I started framing those photos.
And I started noticing that people in suit and tie
would stop and look at them.
If people don't like it, they can pee on it,
scratch it, take it down.
But if what you do creates reactions
and even if people hate it,
I'm happy, because it raise conversation.
[all speaking french]
- JR.
- When I started, it was called vandalism.
Many times, we got arrested.
One day, I went to the closest store,
and I just put a hat and glasses,
and I was like, "Oh, you know, maybe when I take them off,
no one will recognize me."
[French hip-hop music playing over radio]
At that time, I thought that the whole world
was just Paris and its surrounding.
And then I met Ladj Ly,
and he took me to a place I've never seen before.
I met Ladj through Kourtrajm , collective of artists
that were already making art, making graffiti.
And I was pasting, and Ladj was filming.
We had that kind of similar vibe,
and we understood each other right away.
One day, he took me to his neighborhood.
It's a project like mine,
but I've never seen a neighborhood like that.
It was completely abandoned.
- [speaking french]
[wings fluttering]
- [speaking french]
[somber music]
- They built these buildings
where you could be in Paris pretty quickly
but still live in the countryside,
because the train was going to run out there.
But the train never came.
Neither the highway.
The real estate developers all left,
and families that had less money came instead.
The city said, "We have nothing to do with this."
And that's what really drove people crazy.
We're the forgotten of the forgotten.
- [rapping in french]
- At that time, Ladj was shooting a short film
and asked to film me pasting.
[hip-hop music]
I was just pasting in his neighborhood.
Someone said, "Hey, why don't you take us in photo?"
And Ladj said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, take a photo of me."
So boom, I take that photo.
Everybody look at it and say, "You had a gun?"
Like, "What are you talking about?
"You were there. It's not a gun.
It's my camera."
"Oh, yeah, yeah, it's your camera.
That's crazy."
We just took all day of taking photo.
- Talkin' 'bout the wanted brother
- Hey, hey, hey, hey
- Then we were there with all those photos,
but we didn't know what to do with it.
We looked around us, and there was all those buildings.
"Let's cover those buildings.
Let's just do it."
- The wanted brother
[all speaking french]
- Oh-oh! Oh-oh! Oh-oh!
- We didn't want to get arrested,
so we asked all the kids from the neighborhood
to come and hang them by the pasting
so that the cops wouldn't stop us.
When the cops would come by, there'll be, like, 100 of us,
so it's not worth trying to stop
whatever we were doing.
[somber music]
I never pasted an image so big.
That was the first time.
That photo, where Ladj hold his camera like a gun,
it's a photo that will follow us all our life.
I kept on going back there over the years.
That's where did all our projects.
- They're destroying the last building, the B5,
where Ladj had grew up, to rebuild smaller buildings.
This place is, for us, a seed of creation.
Now we're running a school across the street from it.
[indistinct chatter]
It's not a school to, like,
teach you how to become a good photographer
or great painter
but how to survive as an artist.
And it's completely free.
- [speaking french]
- Surrounding yourself with people that come
from different background, different stories,
different paths, that's what nourished us.
You guys should check how it is
and, like, see what you can take from it.
[applause]
[laughter]
- [speaking french]
[laughter]
- [speaking french]
[indistinct chatter]
[dramatic music]
- [speaking french]
[both speaking french]
- [speaking french]
[crowd clamoring]
[tense music]
- [yelling in french]
[people cheering]
[people yelling]
[siren wailing]
[people yelling]
- [speaking french]
[French hip-hop music playing over radio]
[dramatic music]
[motor revving]
[laughter]
[grunts aggressively]
[laughter]
[indistinct chatter]
- [speaking french]
- [yells]
- [speaking french]
[water whooshing]
- [speaking french]
[truck beeping]
- [speaking french]
- Hey. Kevin.
- What's up, man? How are you?
- I'm good. I'm good.
I'm in the middle of pasting right now.
[laughs] Actually, with the team.
- Yeah, yeah.
- You know where I did my first pasting...
- Yeah. - Where I did the photo
of my friend with the camera?
So I'm exactly right there.
Everything has been rebuilt into smaller buildings.
And the last giant building of the neighborhood
is being destroyed.
So we're pasting the entire building.
- But how's everything over there?
- Wow, but, you know,
let's focus on the positive things.
You're coming out very soon. That's crazy.
And this whole swastika on your face
will be an old story that you'll be telling.
[soft vocal music]
- I've seen lots of negativity in my life.
I've seen it. I know what it's like.
It's just so much easier to find the dark side.
Right now, it's only the primary necessity shops
that are open.
Everyone's just locked at home.
The basic things that we need to survive
is actually human contact and to get to know the other
and to get to listen to the other.
It's something as important as eating.
My work is just an excuse to create those encounters
so that people who would normally
never meet get to meet.
It was only a year ago
I was right here in Paris, pasting the entire Louvre.
We had volunteers come from all over
to paste this giant anamorph.
400 people pasting it.
People on the floor wondering what it is,
looking at it.
[cheers and applause]
We were at a moment where we could all gather,
where we could all share something.
But that can all be taken away in a heartbeat.
Often, I rush into doing projects
because I think there will be no tomorrow to do them.
This pandemic makes me focus on that even more.
[birds chirping]
One of my students, Paolo, just learned
that because of the pandemic, he couldn't renew his visa,
so he had to drop out of School Kourtrajm
and go back to Brazil.
[indistinct chatter]
- [speaking french]
So tell me.
- Corona and visa problems,
I have to go back to Brazil.
- Wow. That's crazy.
It's a burden that you cannot be with the students,
you know, for the final show of the year
and that you're forced to go back.
But it's actually a big chance for us--I hope for you too--
to go there and connect with the two worlds.
- Mm-hmm.
- I went to Brazil when I was 23, 24.
I don't actually remember, but there was an incident
in--very violent incident in Rio
in one of the favela called Provid ncia.
- I remember. - You remember it.
- [speaking portuguese]
- Those three kids were just walking to school
in the favela in Brazil,
and they were arrested by the police.
"Oh, you don't have your papers?
Come with us."
And the police sold them to an enemy favela,
where they got killed and chopped into pieces.
[somber music]
- [yelling in portuguese]
[people chanting in portuguese]
- Three kids being killed
at the hands of the police in Brazil,
it reminded me of the deaths of Zyed and Bouna
in Montfermeil, Les Bosquets.
But I'm not gonna just hear what the news is telling me.
I want to hear it by myself.
I want to meet those people.
[dramatic music]
So I went there, 2008.
[children mimicking gunfire]
- [speaking portuguese]
- When I got there, I understood
that it was a complicated favela.
It's the home of the--one of the largest commando of drug
called the Red Commando.
[gunfire]
The community, because of all the drug dealing,
there are a lot of guns involved.
- [speaking portuguese]
I saw how impossible it was to walk in the favelas.
So I started taking photos on the edge of the favela.
As I walked around, I met Rosiete,
and she saw that I was clearly not from there,
you know, that I was a gringo, like you say in Brazil,
for foreigners. - Yes.
- So she said, "What are you doing?"
And I say, "Hey, I'm an artist.
"I'm actually trying to do a project about women
"and how they are the pillar of their community.
"I've been working in Kenya, Liberia,
Sierra Leone, and other countries."
And she say, "Well, you know, we need art here.
There's not enough art."
And I was like, "Yeah, can I come?"
She says, "No. Go home.
"Leave your bag. Leave everything.
"Tomorrow, come back the same place.
You see that street? Go up the street, all the way."
"Anyone who stops you with a gun,
you tell them you're coming to see Rosiete."
When I got up there,
she was waiting for me on the main square.
And she said, "We want to introduce you
to someone from the community."
I was like, "Yeah, sure. Who?"
"His name is Mauricio. He's a photographer."
So, you know, in my head, I'm like,
"Okay, cool, but we don't really need a photographer.
"I need to know how I can paste on the house.
I want to take portraits."
They're like, "No, you need to talk to Mauricio."
So then Mauricio arrives.
He's born there, raised there, knows everyone.
Rather than explaining what I wanted to do,
I took portraits that I had from other projects,
and using my computer,
I placed eyes on the house in Provid ncia.
And I brought him that piece of paper.
Then he understood.
He smiled, because suddenly
it was a project on his favela.
"Oh, you know this one?"
"Yes, that's my neighbor."
And we walked through the favela.
He knocks at the door, and she said,
"What's up, Mauricio? What can I do?"
"Nah, he wants to know if he can paste on your house."
"Yeah, was it? Is it political?"
"No, no, it's not political."
"Is it gonna damage my house?"
"No, no." "Okay, then come in.
You want to--you want to do it now?"
"Oh, no, no, no. We're not ready.
He's just--I'm asking if you want."
"Of course! Why do you bother? Just come and do it."
So I take the paper, and I go, fwt, checked.
So then we went to the next house.
Check.
Maybe Saturday or Sunday,
because her husband was working,
so we'd have the answer on the weekend.
Most of the people were like, "Sure! Do it."
Mauricio said, "Okay,
you need to meet the head of the drug dealers."
So one night, we walk down the favela.
Kids with machine guns, grenades, bulletproof jackets.
We arrive, and there was three leaders,
and they ask us straightaway,
"So yo, who are you? What do you want?"
And we say, "Oh, no, we're artists from France."
And I'm there, and I'm with Ladj.
He came with me. And we have our computer.
And I say, "Okay, look, this is what we've done
in the favelas of France, you know?"
And they look, and it's like, "What? This is not a favela.
This is the richest building."
"Oh, yeah, yeah, okay."
I show them Israel-Palestine project.
This project right here. - Mm-hmm.
- We pasted the wall in Israel-Palestine.
And one of the guys say, "What is Israel-Palestine?"
They never heard of it.
And I couldn't find a bridge to explain to them
what were the other projects.
So I closed it, and we're like,
"Okay, look, this is what we want to do.
We took those photos. We want to paste them."
[indistinct chatter]
The next day, we started pasting the stair.
The stair is actually right in the heart of the favela.
You can't see it from outside.
It's just something that only the locals can see.
So we paste. It's a beautiful day.
And then suddenly...
[gunshots] - [speaking portuguese]
[all speaking portuguese]
Police comes up. Drug dealers replied.
We're in the middle of that.
- [speaking portuguese]
- Ladj is filming down the stairs,
and pop-pop, pop-pop,
and, like, start shooting from all over.
[all speaking portuguese]
- And then couple hours later,
life had started like nothing happened.
And the next day, we come back and continue.
- [speaking portuguese]
- The first image was the grandmother
of one of the three kids.
Everyone understood.
They understood what it was for.
There was no need to explain. There was no text to put.
They knew what it meant.
- [speaking portuguese]
- That's when we left.
I didn't want to do any interview.
I wanted the women to tell their own story.
[dogs barking]
- [speaking portuguese]
[women singing in portuguese]
[all speaking portuguese]
[indistinct chatter, laughter]
[indistinct chatter]
[rain pattering]
- When I was back in Brazil a couple months after,
the people in the favela were telling me,
"JR, there's no school there. There's no NGO.
There's nothing. You have to do one."
And I was 24.
"What, you want me to create a school?
Like, I can't do that."
Mauricio kept calling me: "JR, there's this house.
"This house is empty
"because it keeps receiving bullets
"from the different shootings, so no one wants it,
"and the old man wants to sell it.
You should buy it."
So I gathered the money, and I went there.
I actually taped the money on my body.
And I walked up and bought the house from the old man.
The first thing we did when we got the house
was go down the hill to the paint shop
and bought all the yellow they had,
'cause there was a sale that day on the yellow.
And we called the house Casa Amarela,
the Yellow House.
That's it. And then we had no problem.
[indistinct chatter]
- [speaking portuguese]
[all speaking portuguese]
- Yuri.
- Mariana.
- There was no chairs, no tables, nothing.
So our best idea was, like,
"Oh, let's give a camera" to the kids.
[speaking portuguese]
- [speaking portuguese]
[upbeat music]
[people singing in portuguese]
[all speaking portuguese]
- [speaking portuguese]
[laughter]
- [speaking portuguese]
- Everyone took photos of the family and stuff,
and we pasted it, and then we decided
to celebrate the launch of Casa Amarela.
I thought it would be amazing
if we actually get the people from the city
to come up there, people who live there
and see the favela every day and never been up there.
And we went and see the drug dealer, and we say,
"Okay, tonight we want to launch this house,
"and we want people from the city
"to be able to come in.
"Can we ask you a favor?
Is that there'll be no guns on the stairs?"
And they're like, "Ah, we don't know if that's possible.
We'll see."
[hip-hop music playing]
- [singing in portuguese]
- A lot of people came, people who live in Rio
but have never put a foot in Provid ncia before.
[fireworks popping]
And that night, I'll never forget,
this time, I walk up, they raise their shirt,
and they turn around, back and front,
show me they had no gun.
[dramatic music]
That's the moment I realize how culture have a huge power.
Those guys don't know anything about art,
but they had seen what we've done,
and they accept to take up their gun for an opening.
I would have never imagined that.
[cheers and applause]
- Ten years now. It's been ten years.
We built everything ourself.
The class, the boards, everything is handmade.
I brought two friends, one from Japan,
one from the U.S.,
and they covered the entire house
like if a tree went in and out of the doors.
We were just trying to keep going
and with better years than others.
How do you show those kids another path than drugs?
And we couldn't do it for every kid.
A lot of those kids ended up being drug dealers.
[both speaking portuguese]
- That's him right there.
And if you look at that photo,
he's the only one who survived, all those kids.
Most of them went into drug dealing or died.
That's just the reality of life.
Art will not save everyone and everything.
But when these projects shine all over the world,
showing a positive message
for once for one of those places,
then they understood the power of art.
What happened is, the mayor saw this favela--
the one he had wished, before, didn't exist--on TV every day
but this time, for positive things.
So he send the garbage truck.
Then he send electricity: "Let's redo those cables."
So since then, a lot of things had happened.
But we were struggling to bring artists there.
It's really hard to get people
past the fear of going in a place
where there is all this violence.
I looked at them, I'm like, "Well, we're in here.
"The police, the states don't come
"and ask us any question.
We can do whatever we want."
I went to see my neighbor, and I say,
"Excuse me, I have a question for you.
What happen if we build something in the sky?"
Said, "Well, I don't care.
"You know, as long as it doesn't impact me,
do whatever you want."
So I said, "Well, I want to build a moon up there
"that everyone sees it from all over the city.
"And I want that moon to be a bedroom
"so an artist-- you when you'll go there--
"everyone that will come and donate time
to the kids can sleep up there."
[tools banging]
[indistinct chatter]
Gonna open the lock.
And it's open.
This is the moon, guys.
This is my favorite place, where the teachers who come
and give class in the school can come in and sleep.
There's even AC in there.
And then if you open...
What's up, baby?
That's really top of the moon.
There are limits that we all have within ourself,
limits about what we think is possible
and what we think is not.
I have those too.
And yet people constantly show me that these limits
are not where we think they are.
They're way further.
[machinery whirring]
[all speaking french]
[camera shutter clicking]
[soft vocal music]
[debris crashing]
It's not only about the art.
It's about the people.
My friend Agn s Varda believed
that inside of each person is a landscape.
I would say that within all landscapes,
behind all walls,
are people.
[uplifting music]
[speaking french]
- Wow.
[applause]
[speaking french]
Art Spiegelman wrote a book
about his parents' experience in Auschwitz.
He signed it for Kevin.
And Kevin's right there. He want to say something.
- Thank you very much, Art.
And I do look forward to meeting you one day.
- For sure. - For sure. For sure.
Without the tattoo. [laughter]
- Come on, give me some French.
- [speaking french]
[laughter]
- Damn. That's a good group. Right there.
Okay, let me run to-- from the point of view.
And that's what it look like.
No more walls. Yeah!
- Whoo! - [whistles]
[bright music]