Screened as part of NZIFF 2005

Brasileirinho 2005

Directed by Mika Kaurismäki

This rousing celebration of choro, Brazil’s ‘original urban music’, is the year’s feel-good music documentary. “Toe-tapping, hip-swaying stuff for world-music fans.” — Variety

Brazil / Finland / Switzerland In Portuguese with English subtitles
90 minutes 35mm

Director

Screenplay

Marco Forster
,
Mika Kaurismäki

Photography

Jacques Cheuiche

Editor

Karen Harley

With

Marcello Gonçalves
,
Zé Paolo Becker
,
Rolando do Bandolim
,
Ronaldo Souza
,
Yamandú Costa
,
Elza Soares
,
Teresa Cristina
,
Pedro Miranda
,
Zezé Gonzaga
,
Marcos Suzano
,
Joel Nascimento
,
Silvério Pontes

Festivals

Berlin 2005

Elsewhere

This rousing celebration of choro, Brazil’s ‘original urban music’, is the year’s feel-good music documentary. Finnish director Mika Kaurismaki, brother of the famously deadpan Aki, traces choro’s development from a 19th-century collision of European waltzes and polkas, African rhythms, and the sounds of indigenous South American tribes. Choro fell out of fashion in the 70s and 80s, but it's back with a vengeance now as star players groove to its particular interplay of rigid structure and improvisation. We meet the incredible musicians, young and old, who draw from the well of tradition and conjure forth new hybrids today.

“Featuring copious footage of top-level artists performing with bravura intensity, interspersed with sketchy history lessons and interviews, Brasileirinho represents toe-tapping, hip-swaying stuff for world-music fans… Brasileirinho simply introduces major choro players on the scene in their natural environment, some of their students at a ‘choro school,’ and watches them get on with it… Sound by Uwe Dresch is as crisp as melba toast.” — Leslie Felperin, Variety