Flamenco (1995 film)
Encyclopedia
Flamenco is a 1995
Spanish
documentary film
directed by Carlos Saura
with camerawork by acclaimed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro
. The film is entirely musical and dancing vignettes, composed and photographed on a sound stage.
singers, dancers and guitarists. Helped by cinematography by Vittorio Storaro, director Carlos Saura brings with this film the "Light of Flamenco to the World".
As a hall fills with performers, a narrator says that flamenco came from Andalucia, a mix of Greek psalms, Mozarabic dirges, Castillian ballads, Jewish laments, Gregorian chants, African rhythms, and Iranian and Romany melodies. The film presents thirteen rhythms of flamenco, each with song, guitar, and dance: the up-tempo bularías, a brooding farruca, an anguished martinete, and a satiric fandango de huelva. There are tangos, a taranta, alegrías, siguiriyas, soleás, a guajira of patrician women, a petenera about a sentence to death, villancicos, and a final rumba. Families present numbers, both festive and fierce. The camera and the other performers are the only audience.
This film shows a world of flamenco -- singing, dancing and guitarplaying melded into an intense, enclosing and dramatic space. Song, guitar and dance are blended in inventive ways. They are performed sometimes a cappella, extending the guitar playing in subtle and intense "solos" accompanied often by hand-clapping or knuckles rapped on a table. These dancers have learned the technique but they make the flamenco their own. Here we see children dancing with their parents; and grandparents demonstrating that flamenco imbues the spirit with a graceful power that does not age. At the end, we see the form of flamenco symbolically passed through a class of aspiring dancers.
, Joaquín Cortés
, Manolo Sanlúcar
, Lole y Manuel
, La Paquera de Jerez, Fernanda de Utrera, José Menese, Enrique Morente, José Mercé, Farruco y Farruquito, Ketama
, Manzanita
and many others at the old Seville
train station
with English
subtitles. The lyrics of the songs are translated in the subtitles (the only "dialog" in the film).
1995 in film
-Top grossing films:-Events:* March 22 - The Dogme 95 movement is officially announced in Paris by Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg.* March 28 - Actress Julia Roberts and singer Lyle Lovett announce their plans for separation....
Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
documentary film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
directed by Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura Atarés is a Spanish film director and photographer.-Early life:Born into a family of artists , he developed his artistic sense in childhood as a photography enthusiast.He obtained his directing diploma in Madrid in 1957 at the Institute of Cinema Research and Studies...
with camerawork by acclaimed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro
Vittorio Storaro
Vittorio Storaro, A.S.C., A.I.C. is an Italian cinematographer.In 2003, a survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild judged Storaro one of history's ten most influential cinematographers.-Biography:...
. The film is entirely musical and dancing vignettes, composed and photographed on a sound stage.
Synopsis
Flamenco is a documentary that includes performances from some of the best flamencoFlamenco
Flamenco is a genre of music and dance which has its foundation in Andalusian music and dance and in whose evolution Andalusian Gypsies played an important part....
singers, dancers and guitarists. Helped by cinematography by Vittorio Storaro, director Carlos Saura brings with this film the "Light of Flamenco to the World".
As a hall fills with performers, a narrator says that flamenco came from Andalucia, a mix of Greek psalms, Mozarabic dirges, Castillian ballads, Jewish laments, Gregorian chants, African rhythms, and Iranian and Romany melodies. The film presents thirteen rhythms of flamenco, each with song, guitar, and dance: the up-tempo bularías, a brooding farruca, an anguished martinete, and a satiric fandango de huelva. There are tangos, a taranta, alegrías, siguiriyas, soleás, a guajira of patrician women, a petenera about a sentence to death, villancicos, and a final rumba. Families present numbers, both festive and fierce. The camera and the other performers are the only audience.
This film shows a world of flamenco -- singing, dancing and guitarplaying melded into an intense, enclosing and dramatic space. Song, guitar and dance are blended in inventive ways. They are performed sometimes a cappella, extending the guitar playing in subtle and intense "solos" accompanied often by hand-clapping or knuckles rapped on a table. These dancers have learned the technique but they make the flamenco their own. Here we see children dancing with their parents; and grandparents demonstrating that flamenco imbues the spirit with a graceful power that does not age. At the end, we see the form of flamenco symbolically passed through a class of aspiring dancers.
Cast
Performances by: Paco de LucíaPaco de Lucía
Paco de Lucía, born Francisco Sánchez Gómez , is a Spanish virtuoso flamenco guitarist and composer. He is considered by many to be one of the finest guitarists in the world and the greatest guitarist of the flamenco genre...
, Joaquín Cortés
Joaquín Cortés
Joaquín Pedraja Reyes "Joaquín Cortés" is a classically trained ballet and flamenco dancer from Spain of Romani origin.-Biography:...
, Manolo Sanlúcar
Manolo Sanlúcar
Manolo Sanlúcar is a flamenco composer and guitarist born in Sanlúcar de Barrameda in 1945. He is considered one of the most important Spanish composers of present times, and together with Paco de Lucía, Serranito, and Vicente Amigo, one of the main figures in the evolution of the flamenco...
, Lole y Manuel
Lole y Manuel
Lole y Manuel is a Spanish musical duo which composed and performed innovative flamenco music. Their groundbreaking album Nuevo Dia fused traditional Spanish flamenco with Arabic rhythms and styles...
, La Paquera de Jerez, Fernanda de Utrera, José Menese, Enrique Morente, José Mercé, Farruco y Farruquito, Ketama
Ketama
Ketama are a Spanish flamenco group in the fusion flamenco style. The leaders of what has been called New Flamenco, they brought a style that was somewhere between flamenco and pop salsa onto the musical scene that drew as much criticism as praise, but which has won over the young public and has...
, Manzanita
Manzanita
Manzanita is a common name for many species of the genus Arctostaphylos. They are evergreen shrubs or small trees present in the chaparral biome of western North America, where they occur from southern British Columbia, Washington to California, Arizona and New Mexico in the United States, and...
and many others at the old Seville
Seville
Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...
train station
DVD release
Flamenco was issued on DVD by New Yorker Video in December 2003, in SpanishSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
with English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
subtitles. The lyrics of the songs are translated in the subtitles (the only "dialog" in the film).