Behind the Scenes: Producer Stories

Bonnie Cohen, Actual Films

Maria Leal

The alleys in the favela where Coopa Roca's offices are located are barely a foot wide, with tiny ramshackle buildings crowded with people, garbage everywhere, with our women laboring away in their homes to make clothes for some of the world's great designers. But this is social entrepreneurship at its best.

We shot in the favelas in Rio during a fairly chaotic week. A druglord, who had been in jail for a number of years, had returned to the streets of Rocinha, the favela where Coopa Roca resides, to regain control of his territory. As our crew tried to move around the favela to film with the various women we highlighted in the show, we found ourselves caught between the police and the gangs. One afternoon, we had to duck into a small store-front that could barely fit all four of our crew and wait as the gangand the police had a stand-off. Everyone was armed, the streets were riddled with gunfire and we were unsure how we would get out of there. Luckily, we made it safely back to the Coopa Roca office and resumed our filming. It certainly enabled us to fully realize the plight of these women and their lives in the favela. Even the locals who accompanied us werefrightened to be in Rocinha on that day and none of them were willing to return in the following days.

Albina Ruiz

The thing about Albina is that she has such a big heart that no matter what we asked her to do, she not only agreed but did it with such warmth and energy. Every day were shot in a different part of Peru. We would shoot for 12 hours and then hop in the van and drive for five or six hours. She would give us massages, talk about literature, tell us about Peru. She is such a force of nature that being with her, you are forced to live life in a full way. The crew was charmed. When it actually came to shooting her during her work, we went into these garbage dumps — unimaginable places — and Albina was as at home there, talking to the people in their little huts as if she was in a small town Mayor's office trying to set up municipal solutions to Peru's terrible garbage problem. She worked from the bottom up or the top down. She is a real humanist. She sees the importance and the humanity in everyone — politicians, downtrodden people living off the garbage, even our crew. When we first met her, we knew we were in for one of the most memorable weeks of our lives.

Mimi Silbert

Mimi is one of these people who had a vision for the way the world should be and she created it and now inhabits it. She has boundless energy for everyone. She has an eleven-year-old dog called Amnesty that follows hereverywhere — when she held meetings with all her ex-con department heads to discuss their ever-growing million dollar businesses, all these huge guys would get down on the floor with Amnesty and roll around on the carpet playing with her. They are a family at Delancey. Mimi runs the place like a kibbutz — everyone, including her, lives there, works there, eats there, contributes there. No money is exchanged — noexpectations are doled out — except to stay sober and remain non-violent. It is a microcosm of a perfectly symbiotic world.