Review: Afro-Sambas

Many Portraits, One Form

by Renan Eduardo

Recent years of Brazilian Cinema have shown a tendency, which is manifest in documentaries and cine-biographies, to film stories and albums of Brazilian music, mostly Brazilian music of black origin. Whether as symptom, proposal or offer – or perhaps an historical demand – the programming of Rio de Janeiro Int’l Film Festival of 2024, like many other festivals and screenings, includes many of these portraits which could already be considered a sub-genre of our historical era.

Obviously, it is quite common for filmmakers to film musicians and has been happening frequently in Brazilian Cinema for many years. However, what attracts attention in contemporary examples is not only the quantity of work produced, but also a certain stylistic similarity in registering these subjects. In this respect, David Bordwell points out that an artist’s style is the result of amalgamating his historical background —material conditions of existence and technical or technological dispositions available — and the personal desires of the author for his work — his formal and aesthetical propositions.

However, it seems that contemporary material conditions seem to demand an historical urgency in portraying certain figures of an advanced age or who no longer grace the stage. The flipside of this, which we can witness in the great majority of these films, are stylistic whims which are very similar. The majority of the films count on the following structure: interviews with the artistes themselves and/or people close to them, archive images and brief musical performances (of those portrayed or their friends) which punctuate the film’s rhythm as intertitles or covering shots, not in itself a problem.

Few shades away from televisual journalism, the interviews are frequently laden with a nostalgic and memory-laden tone as regards the artiste or the work in question. The exceptional nature of the person portrayed is often repeated, and with remarkable frequency, there is a discussion as to how the work was profoundly misunderstood at the time of its launching. The archive images, in turn, almost always follow as though towed along by the affectionate discourse and the interview memories which propose to rewrite the story by challenging it with present-day perspectives and remembrances in little anecdotes or information concerning the personal life of the artistes. Or rather, it is as though we could remove the subject who is being filmed, substitute them for another and the film would remain practically the same. Distinct figures of Brazilian music are filmed as if they were homogenous for supposedly belonging to the same artistic class; Mano Brown is filmed in the same way as Dorival Caymmi. Thus, the films hardly seem to be affected by the subjectivity — musical and personal — that the subjects have to offer.

Thinking back, we remember Partido alto (1972) and Nelson Cavaquinho (1969), both directed by Leon Hirszman. Also produced under conditions described as “urgent”, the director proposes quite distinct approaches for each of his subjects. Even with his frail health and wheelchair, Hirszman’s camera snakes around following Mestre Candeia’s hands; as also it is imbued with the space which surrounds Nelson Cavaquinho and his melancholy songs. It is also possible to approximate the obsessive relationship of Carlos Adriano and Rogério Sganzerla with the people they portray. In Sganzerla’s case, it is curious to note that even when filming a subject with whom he had no personal contact, Noel Rosa, the stylistic approaches are distinct. Carlos Adriano opts for an approach in which everything is shown, while at the same time hardly anything is seen. As a result of his editing, we are left only with the vestiges of Vassourinha. The film gives an impression of totality, but is materialised in its incompleteness.

Going back to the extensive scenario of portraits produced in recent years, my interest in approaching these works offered by the festival comes from the desire to be surprised, to be enchanted by the form, to the same degree as I am enchanted by the music of the artistes portrayed. However, together with this dimension of desire, questions emerge: is it possible to create new mechanisms to approach these subjects? Does the historical juncture superimpose itself over the desires of the authors or is this desire born with the device of the film itself? For now, it is impossible to make the distinction. What we have are films in their substance under the umbrella of the historical present.

Os afro-sambas: o Brasil de Baden e Vinícius, directed by Emilio Domingos (Brazil, 2024, Première Brasil Hors Concours) becomes another one of the works to integrate this present sub-genre. The film’s title already makes it evident who is to be portrayed – Baden Powell and Vinicius de Moraes –, and more than that: it also delimits its “thematic” selection: it is a film about a record, more specifically the album Os afro-Sambas de Baden e Vinicius. Like other documentaries of his time, Emílio Domingos’ film also makes use of archive images, interviews with people close to the sambistas and small musical performances. However, the filmmaker proposes a different kind of film device, something like a react.

In the middle of the interviews and archive images, we distantly hear a man’s voice, possibly Emílio’s, asking the interviewee to choose a track from the album – not necessarily their favourite. The procedure is for the character to choose one and play it. The artifice is shown in scene but very quickly. Mostly, the shots are short and quickly revert to the usual structure. The repetition of a particular discourse, reinforced by speech and images, suffocate the stimulating scenic device created by the film itself.

Nonetheless, most of the times that this film device emerges, instead of the music reverberating and filling the environment in which the scene takes place with musical waves, the film substitutes the direct sound for the recorded track. The music emerges more as the soundtrack than as footage. Instead of a sound which vibrates in the air of these limited and finite spaces, the filmed event consists in presenting a clean and noiseless sound for the audience. The film finds an escape mechanism, but does not seem to take advantage of it. In the face of this, other questions arise: Where and how does the force of black musicality emanate (or can emanate) in Brazilian cinema? Is it possible to escape some homogenising procedures even in the face of the supposed urgency in filming these subjects?

There is no reason to doubt this. Even with this contemporary selection, and others a little more distant, it is possible to see some work that escapes these formulas. In Emílio Domingos own work, we can wander around the Lapa viaduct’s arches with BNegão, in L.A.P.A. (2007), a mechanism which resists all these habits. The city, the subject, the sound and the music occupy the sonorous space of an environment which creates noises and connections. In more recent examples, Andança: os encontros e as memórias de Beth Carvalho (Pedro Bronz, 2022), and Voz e vazio: a vez do vassourinha (Carlos Adriano, 1998), use only archive images without interviews to portray the godmother of samba. It is as though the images and sounds alone narrate the story. Paula Gaitán invests in films of interviews which use unfinished material, remains of images, which can easily be cut by other filmmakers, like in Ostinato (2021) and É rocha e rio, Negro Leo (2020).

Maybe, what can emerge as a proposal for such work, is a desire for entirety in opposition to singularity. An artiste who contradicts themself in each shot, like in É rocha e rio, Negro Leo (2020) or a light at the end of the afternoon which illuminates the roda de samba, like in Partido alto (Leon Hirszman, 1972), can take the place of the monologues and re-elaboration of history. In their great majority these films talk more than they dance.