NEWS

SAMBA! Documentary Monday February 18th Kino Světozor

There is a lot to celebrate when Kino Svetozor reopens after its renovation. And just in time for the biggest party on the planet - Carnaval. Rio de Janeiro hosts the largest Carnaval celebration in the world. Preparations for Carnaval for competing samba “schools” begin many months before the actual parades and balls that have made the celebration so spectacular over the last century. One gets a taste of the way Carnaval was in the late 1950’s in the classic music film Black Orpheus (insert link), which was screened as part of the special Brazil section for MOFFOM 05. In a more contemporary context, the film SAMBA! documents the ecstasy and romance but also the business and politics of this massive event. Documentary Monday at Kino Světozor has reduced entrance fee of CZK 80.

More at www.kinosvetozor.cz

 

Samba!

2006 | Brazil, U.S.A. | Portuguese, English | 95 min.

Director: Adam Stepan

Producer: Monica Leite de Silva Stepan

Dir. Of Photography: Adam Stepan, Flavio Ferreira

Editors: Felipe Lacerda, Adam Stepan

Music: Nani Dias, Roberto Pollo

Sound: Coll Anderson 

Samba! follows the intense six-month buildup to the world famous Carnaval of Rio de Janeiro through several diverse and eccentric characters who have devoted their lives to the pagentry and mythology surrounding the annual event. These include some of the parade's aging founders, powerful businessmen, a formerly rich aesthete who has spent his family fortune on a series of increasingly elaborate costumes, an overweight recluse from Los Angeles who discovered Carnaval over the Internet, and the "Socialist Socialite" who represents Rio's poorest favelas. The film traces raging battles between tradition and business, and uses samba culture and its representation in the media as a vehicle for addressing race and class in contemporary Brazil.