Along with the many problems existing on our beautiful planet, poverty is one of the biggest and one of the oldest in the history of Mankind. After poverty, comes lack of education, robberies, drugs, prostitution and everything else that a man or a woman could fall into due to the dependence on money.
During a trip to Brazil in 2009 to one of the poorest places in search of human organ traffickers, Riccardo Neri, a film producer and his crew, met a book trafficker Rocardo Gomez Ferraz, who uses the nickname KCal, who was supposed to protect the crew.
“Honestly, I was expecting someone like a bodybuilder with tattoos and a gold tooth. We met this tiny and gentle guy. I was scared, I was thinking we couldn’t stay more than 5 minutes in the favela with this guy to protect us. The reality was completely different. We spent two days, shooting everywhere, meeting crack dealers, criminals, transexuals, with access in every house, barrack…At the end of the second day, I was so curious to know who was that guy, why everybody respected him so much. Was he the real boss? Was he the Godfather? He told me what he was, what he was doing for the community and then he showed us his barrack full of books. I was amazed by his work, his attitude, his mission. He started playing a guitar, singing his poems, telling stories to the dozens of kids who joined us.” said Neri for The Spread.
Eventually, the organ trafficking film (titled as H.O.T Human Organ Trafficking, available on Netflix) was finished, but Neri couldn’t let this story go off hand and came back six months later to shoot A Mao e a Luva: The Story of a Book Trafficker with the Italian director Roberto Orazi.
KCal’s story starts with him being on the street since he was a child, in a family with seven other siblings, each from a different father, in the midst of drugs, arms and violence. The only person who could teach him how to read and give him some attention was his grandmother. At the age of sixteen, KCal left the house to live and earn by himself. One day, he went to a bookstore, and saw a book by the name “A Mao e a Luva” and he thought that was a very interesting title. He bought it and read it. The part that stroke him was that everyone has a glove to find in their lives that fit their hands, or less poetically said, everyone has talents to use for the good of mankind. He found himself in those lines, explored his own inner qualities, and came up with music and poetry. He started buying books, and by the age of 20, he had 80 90 books, hoping to form a library that his community could use.
KCal said in the film that at first, people didn’t understand, but he kept being persistent.It was his dream for the community, and gradually, children and adults started reading books.
KCal’s friends said in the interviews that the reason why people take the negative routes is the lack of opportunity to educate themselves, and the lack of work to make a decent living in Recife. A lot of children, before the library, were turned to the negative direction but KCal used his charm to turn them to the positive by allowing them to read and use their imagination to travel anywhere with their minds and hearts. KCal became a very well respected man, even by the criminals.
Today, KCal is the founder of “Livroteca o Goardioes”, a non-profit library who continues to insert culture in his city of Recife in the state of Pernambuco. KCal is a recognized poet, musician, writer, who accepted a grant from the Ministry of Culture in Brazil to remodel his library, and to organize events for the children.
He believes that art is everything – the food for the soul, and what drives people out of poverty and promotes peace. Following his example, there are 541 libraries in the poor communities that the Ministry of Culture has established.
“Being there three times with these people, gave to me and my crew (4 people), the chance to consider many things. What kind of life we live in our country, what kind of education we give to our children. Do we act in good way against our family and kids? I met kids who spend the day naked by the river playing sometimes with a little rope or a spoon or a little ball. Without tons of plastic toys made in China, without Nintendo DS, without an iPhone 5S. It has been one of the greatest experience I ever did in my whole life and Kcal has been my teacher in this”, added Neri.
A Mao e a Luva is available on Vimeo ONDEMAND, and partially the proceeds go to KCal’s library. The film was screened at several film festivals, including the Human Rights Association Film Fest in 2011, where Bill Gould (the band leader of Faith No More) saw the film and asked for KCal to be on stage for his concert in Brazil. It is absolutely a recommended film to uplift people’s consciousness and inspire them to do as much as possible for the homeless and the poor communities to fight poverty, drugs, organ trafficking, and prostitution, and promote love, art, happiness and equality for all.
Catch the film and support Kcal’s work here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/kcal/97270007
