Tuesday night I went to a screening of an awesome documentary called "Brasilintime", at the lovely Egyptian Theatre. The screening was at 7:30, and since I absolutely hate arriving late for a movie, I arrived at about 6:50. There were probably 2 other people there. At 7 I was the only person who entered the theater, and then a handful of people showed up around 7:15. A friend of mine was running late to come watch the film with me, so I started to think that not many more people would show up and my friend was going to be fine... and then 7:25 rolled around and brought with it the music-loving masses. Suddenly tons of people showed up, as if everyone had been chilling up until 7:25 and were then like, "whoa, the movie's about to start" and decided to get seats. At 8pm, well after the movie was scheduled to start and had yet to, people were still showing up, my friend was still looking for parking, and I was worried that tickets were going to sell out before my friend even got out of her car.
The doc opens with 4 American DJs who are all no more than 40 and 3 bad-ass American percussionists who are no younger than 60 arriving in Sao Paulo for an awesome musical experience. They have come to the land of wonderful music to team up with some of its best representatives: 1 Brazilian DJ and 3 Brazilian percussionists who each come from different musical backgrounds - traditional samba, tropicalia and Brazilian jazz from the 70s and early 80s. The film follows all of these musicians as they prepare for one night of beauty: playing together and improvising together in a Sao Paulo club, the DJs spinning and the percussionists pounding their drums.
There are many lovely moments in the film. For one, all of the characters are engaging, and their passion for music is contagious. That passion is one of the elements that makes the doc work for me. Another is the time that is taken to introduce the percussionists. It's done with such love and respect that laymen like me get that much closer to appreciating the process of making music, and the genius that goes into creating it. One of my favorite sequences, among many, is when the American DJs search for Brazilian records in a Sao Paulo record shop and a fleamarket, and show each other the treasures they find. They are by turns serious poker-faced scholars on a mission, and music geeks excited by their finds. The best sequence of course is the night of the performance, when all of the musicians play together as if they had been doing it forever. It's magical to watch.
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