Unlucky love, bull fights, life troubles, social critiques, poor people’s lives, the sea and horses are the motifs that dominate Fado, the world acclaimed Portuguese music whose main element is saudade or yearning



“Fado as a Portuguese musical genre was first noted in the 19th century but most likely originated even earlier”, says the prologue of the musical documentary Fados directed by the master of Spanish cinema, Carlos Saura. Some say that Fado originated from the music of Moors who inhabited the area around Lisbon after it became a Christian city. However, there are those who say that Fado came to Portugal, once more through Lisbon, in the form of Lundum, the music of the Brazilian slaves. It is thought that Fado first appeared in Lisbon and Porto and then was transferred to the medieval Portuguese capital Coimbra. Fado musicians wear black clothes and their symbol is a black scarf. The most popular Fado singer Amália Rodrigues was eventually succeeded by the world famous Mariza. Saura’s sonically and visually impressive film, composed as a series of independent musical performances by the most famous Portuguese Fado musicians, presents all Fado’s aspects: from the traditional ones illustrated by archival footage of performances by the legendary Alfredo Merceneiro and Amália Rodrigues, to contemporary ones shown in performances by young hip hop musicians and their politically engaged and socially aware songs which remind us of revolutionary hymns. Moreover, Saura innovatively and energetically uses various technical aids and “tricks”, such as back projections, mirrors, bright colored lights and effective set design.

The influence of Fado’s sad and melancholy melodies and lyrics is evident in many films from this year’s program of Ibero-American films. For example, in the excellent existentialist drama Peacetime (Tempos de Paz) by Daniel Filho, an adaptation of the acclaimed drama Novas Diretrizes em Tempos de Paz by Bosco Brazil, which takes place almost entirely in a storage area in the Rio de Janeiro harbor. On April 18, 1945 strict police officer Sigismundo questions the unfortunate Clausewitz, a Polish Jew who immigrated to Brazil to start a new life. On one side there is Clausewitz, an actor, a kind and always smiling man who claims to want to become a farmer and thinks that in that way he could be useful to Brazil, while on the other side we have Sigismundo, a member of President Vargas’ political police force, an extremely limited bureaucrat, prone to violence and a paranoid type who sees Nazis, spies and potential threats to his country’s safety in everyone. Suggesting the real time during which the action takes place, the movie was filmed in ten days and with a budget of 1.5 million dollars and the director succeeded in creating an excellent character study through the conversation between the two main characters. Even though there is sometimes a feeling of staginess and over-construction, it is an intriguing film that deals on many levels with the relationship between a free mind and totalitarianism, conflict between altruism and misanthropy, the clash between a liberal individual who has no boundaries and the unfathomably narrow-minded extended arm of a bullying system that blindly follows rules and sadistically takes pleasure in belittling others and psychological and physical violence.

In 2009, Peruvian screenwriter and director Claudia Llosa more than deserved the award at the Berlin Film Festival for her excellent drama The Milk of Sorrow. At the time the thirty-three year old director, conceived her story about an introverted girl who works as a maid in a rich family’s home in Lima and has to organize her mother’s funeral as a pronouncedly anxious but impressively socially intoned, suggestive and atmospheric homage to women who were raped by members of the Sandero Luminoso group during the civil war in the early 1980’s. In Llosa’s film everything is in powerful contrast, from the funeral of the girl’s mother and her cousin’s wedding, through the relationship between tradition and the modernity, to clearly differentiated class differences. The film’s title refers to the old belief that frightened women who breastfeed their children during hard times, such as wars and violence, transfer their fears to children through their milk.
Vincent Cassell’s striking role in the existentialist romantic drama Adrift (A Deriva) the Brazilian screenwriter and director Heitor Dhalia is probably the film’s biggest asset. It is an elegantly directed film and its atmosphere is quite suggestive but it is also at times merely a kitschy and overly conventional romance. The story takes place in the 1980s and we follow a sensitive teenage girl whose sexuality is awakening during her summer holiday. At the same time, she becomes aware of her father’s infidelity and her family’s immanent collapse. As is to be expected, it is an emotional film, but to some extent overly burdened by not too original parts of the plot that remind us too much of similar films about growing up and maturing.

It is impossible to describe all of the other successful films from this program in this short text, so it is our recommendation that audiences come to Tuškanac and enjoy the Portuguese adventure drama The Mystery of Sintra (O Mistério da Estrada de Sinatra) by Jorge Paixão da Costa and the Chilean films 199 Recetas para ser Feliz by Andrés Waissbluth and Lokas by Gonzalo Justiniano as well as two Argentinian films, the entertaining comedy Brother and Sister by Daniel Burman and the acclaimed thriller drama Carancho by Pablo Trapero. (Josip Grozdanić)