Transparency Watch (TW): First, I would like to congratulate you on the film – I found it excellent. One of the things that really surprised me was how many characters there are and how many stories you have managed to weave together. Which aspect of the story did you begin with and how did the expansion of the storyline unfold?

Jason Kohn (JK): I was working for a filmmaker in Boston and researching Brazil because I really wanted to do something on Brazil. I was always seeing corruption in the daily news cycles, but then it would always be forgotten. Nothing happened to stop it. And at the time, my father was also getting held up in his car every once in awhile.

Then one day my dad called from Sao Paolo and told he about the frog farm. My reaction was basically “Excuse me? Millions of dollars to create a frog farm?” Around the same time, a story appeared in the New York Times about the plastic surgeon doing ear reconstruction for kidnapping victims. And then I was talking with a friend and we thought it was like how the rich stealing from the poor and the poor stealing from the rich. It’s class warfare, but a new kind of warfare. It’s not so delineated. It all really began from reading about this.

I went down to Brazil when I was 23, I sold my car, and we started filming everything we could that was related to these two stories. Following the frog farming story, I started to learn about [the politician] Jader Barbalhlo and to look into stories involving alleged misappropriation of public funds. Then there was the profile of the kidnapping victim. A lot of people were linked together through money.

TW: Have you ever had any personal experience with corruption?

JK: My father lives in Sao Paolo and so this is really my second city. In Brazil it is nearly impossible not to experience corruption. For example, during the making of the film, we spent forever trying to get an interview with a kidnapper. We finally found someone willing to speak with us, but he was in prison, and to get to him, we would have had to pay US $10,000 in bribes. It’s not that it is illegal to do these kinds of interviews from jail, but we would have had to grease the wheels by paying off judges, lawyers, jail officials. We were prepared to pay it - it was a story that really needed to be told. But then the money ran out.

TW: With the first viewing of the film it may not be obvious that all aspects of the film are closely related to corruption – surely they are all related to crime. But the line of reasoning would have to be that because of the political corruption – depicted in the film as the misuse, or misappropriation, of SUDAM funds – poverty increased for those who did not benefit as the SUDAM project intended, and because of this poverty, crime increased. Would you agree? Or do you see the link in another way?

JK: I would absolutely agree. Corruption begets poverty, begets violence, begets corruption. That is exactly the message of the film – the drastic snowball effect of political corruption.

TW: According to Claudio Fonteles, the Attorney General of Brazil, “Corruption is the thing that links all other crimes.” Do you agree?

JK: Absolutely. I consider the guy an absolute hero. This interview came two and a half years into the project, and it was such a relief. For so long it was really difficult to explain to people what the film was about, especially the crew. Then we sat down with the Attorney General of Brazil, and he basically laid down in three sentences what the film was about. It was stunning. Crew members cried. Not only did they finally understand what the film was then about, they began to understand the situation in Brazil in a much different way. They came to understand how corruption does have this strong effect on society, and how it is all related.

TW: The film highlights one prominent political figure – Jadar Barbalho. Did you find it difficult to get information about him? Do you have any idea where he is today?

JK: He is still in office! Now he is in Congress, and more powerful than perhaps any other time in his career. He is the president of his political party. He has allied himself politically with Brazil’s President Lula. There was recently a story run on millions of dollars he owned in taxes for a television broadcasting company he owned.

TW: There are a few references to the huge amount of wealth accumulated by Javier Barbalho in the film; in one instance of receiving US $9 million for a US $300,000 frog farm, in another the statement of the civil lawyer that he received US $30 million for a rubber plantation that did not plant one tree. Are there any estimates as to the total amount of wealth appropriated by Barbalho?

Manager of the frog farm in question (left), speaking with a translator for the film about the fiancing of the frog farm. This image is a still, taken from the film, with the persmission of Jason Kohn.

JK: It is impossible to say – even these figures are estimates. There is not a lot of consistency with these numbers. For the film, we used the numbers the public prosecutors were using the most, but even these are estimates.

It is even harder to garner estimates of the numbers because I believe it is likely that much of the money is in overseas accounts. You’ve seen the testimony of the civil attorney fighting against Barbalho in the film – it’s his experience after twenty years chasing this guy – recovering the money is the hardest part.

TW: One of the predominant elements of the film was violent crime. Did you feel physically threatened at any point of making the film?

JK: I never felt myself at risk, but perhaps that is because I dressed like a schmuck and drove a shitty car. However, in the making of the film there was one instance where things got very scary – we were shooting the interview with the kidnapper. First we went out for beers, then his wife cooked us lunch. It was really nice. Then we saw the police coming into the favella. Besides being a kidnapper, he is also a drug dealer - he had a kilo of crack and a kilo of cocaine in his home. We were all laying on the floor and he yelled “go get my gun.” Then he was standing in his doorframe, gun loaded, ready to exchange fire.

The police got out right in front of his house, and started circling his house. And he really didn’t mind – he felt like killing police officers was part of his job. What we didn’t understand at the time, was that the police wanted to take him on the outside, drinking beers with an American, so they would be able to extort bribes from him. When they saw he was inside, not outside, they went away. I had assumed a certain amount of risk in making the film, but this was a little much.

TW: The opening shot in the film says “A film that cannot be shown in Brazil.” What do you mean by this? Have you tried to show it in Brazil?

JK: In the United States, documentary film makers are protected under the same journalistic laws as the journalists. In Brazil that is not the case. In Brazil any distributor would have to deal with potential lawsuits from persons featured in the film.

TW: What do you hope to achieve with your film?

JK: Well the film wasn’t originally shot as a documentary, but as a feature film. My true passion is for film and creating interesting things that people want to see. But if I had to send a message with my film, it would be this: political corruption is a violent crime with dramatic social consequences. I am not so confident into thinking that. As long people to think of political corruption as an act of theft, then they will deal with it theft is not really punished in a significant way. But this is not theft. This is an act of violence. You cannot steal millions of dollars from very poor people and expect there not to be social consequences. And this coming from politicians, whose are meant to be responsible for the social good.

Manda Bala was the winner of two awards at the Sundance Film Festival 2007 – best documentary and excellence in cinematography. Manda Bala opened in New York City at The Angelika on 17 August, in Los Angeles at Laemmle’s Royal and Laemmle’s Playhouse on 31 August. To check if Manda Bala will come to your city, or to watch the trailer, please see: www.mandabala.com .

About the director:

Jason Kohn is a first time director from New York. At twenty-three, he left Errol Morris’ office to make the feature documentary Manda Bala, a film about kidnapping and corruption in Brazil. In the course of producing this film he received the Sundance Documentary Fund grant and a Mortimer-Hayes Fellowship. Jason’s life is dedicated to the appreciation and production of cinema and fighting corrosive cultural powers of god, greed and corruption.

Jason made Manda Bala with close college friends Joey Frank and Jared Goldman. He spent the past five years solely producing and directing Manda Bala.