Quilombo

Are you like me, where you get to a point and the best gift someone can give you is to recommend an album, book or movie?

Well recommending this was my gift this year from one of my kids, and I'm grateful for it.

At the outset, I immediately recognized Gilberto Gil's voice, and as my son predicted the music here serves as one significant delight - granted some of that 80's electric bass fusion was a little tricky for my ears.

Going in, I knew nothing of the specifics to Brazilian history circa the 1600's and slave trade. I knew a little more about Vodoun characters, and it was interesting to see the shadows of Shango and Ogun appear here, and led by a Zumbi defying death no less.

The film has the elements of rebels/resistance combined with feels like a Carneval-esque celebration between battle scenes. My son came across it as part of a Surreal Films class, but the professor/he point out that is far more in the magical realism realm. There are points where tribal leaders assemble in color and strike poses that reminded us of a Japanese anime. Power Rangers precursors?

Granted the film is serious at its heart - fight for dignity and freedom is important, and comes with a horrific loss of life through-out - there is a spirit of celebration, and elements just this side of magic, that make it an exhilarating watch albeit dated in cinematic technique.

Enjoy it for the songs and costume design (could have spent all 600 characters on that alone), and for the fact that in Brazil, the US and beyond we are still bending towards a more just if not more magical world.

This is a relatively close historical depiction of the resistance of the displaced Africans, mostly from Angola, to Brazil for use as slaves for the Portuguese. Diegues maintains historical accuracy of the quilombo(kilombo) called Palmares and the life the escaped Africans led and their struggle to lead that life far from the oppressive Portuguese. This is one of the few films which tells the story of African people actively resisting European slavers. Quilombo also follows the life of Zumbi, the death of Ganga Zumba,the initial leader of Palmares and Zumbi's rise to become the eventual leader of Palmares. For anyone looking at history and its true representation in film, this is a good start. It plays close to the vest in historical authenticity.

This film tells the true story of escaped black slaves who found their own mountain-top commune as free men in 17th-century Brazil. The story is interesting and edifying. However, this film -- as a film -- is terrible.

The soundtrack is not period music or tribal music. It is Afro-Brazilian pop music from the early 1980s. Battle scenes are fought to the sounds of cheesy pop rhythms best left to the disco or bad cops dramas. Admittedly, the lyrics are folk-ish tales of the slaves' heroism. The special effects are absurd. Rather than invoke the mysticism of African religion and atavistic beliefs, they merely make the film look cheap. They are completely unbelievable, and I don't mean merely in a sense of verisimilitude.

Life within the commune of Palmares could not have been the way it is portrayed in the film. For this society, as shown in the film, is one-part kibbutz, one-part Afro-pop festival. Moreover, it is almost embarrassing to watch the director play upon the clichés of blacks as talented singers and dancers who simply want to be happy. He portrays daily life as a series of dance parties in which the freed slaves paint themselves bright colors and whirl around to the strains of '80s pop music. On the other hand, they have an abundance of beautiful food, but the viewer hardly sees any work being done. The king inveighs against private property in a hackneyed and clichéd way. When a man complains that people are taking the vegetables that he has grown over many months, the king says, "What comes from the earth belongs to everyone, as the earth belongs to no one. If they need food, they have a right to take yours."

I am glad that I learned about this episode in history, but I am relieved that a film with such low production values and that trades upon such worn stereotypes would likely not be made today.

A very fun, vibrant, exciting, and moving tale of escaped slaves setting up their own community. Like all of Diegues films, it's not meant to be precisely accurate - and if you're hoping for a Hollywood budget and historical verisimilitude you won't find them here. What you will find is a passion for film making, and a passion for a great story, and some joyful, exuberant acting. The use of music is excellent, the sounds chosen to evoke the present. The use of color is wonderful, like watching a Mardi gras parade in Rio. The camera work is fluid and the framing busy yet focused. The sort of film you want to watch immediately again to catch all the action in the frame you didn't see the first go through.

When you think of Brazil, the images that come to your mind are probably the Amazon, Christ the Redeemer and the favelas. What you might not know is the history of slavery in Brazil. As in the United States, it was one of the most horrendous institutions in history, with kidnapped Africans worked to death on plantations.

No surprise that the enslaved people resisted. Many of them fled the plantations and formed their own communities, called quilombos. Carlos Diegues's "Quilombo" is about one of these in particular, called Palmares. This group of people did what they could to survive, and also made efforts to keep their heritage alive, cut off though they were from Africa. But the Portuguese weren't going to let them get away so easily.

At the very least, this movie will likely be an introduction to a largely forgotten part of history. I recommend it both for this, and for focus on how the quilombolas embrace their African heritage (dance, attire, etc). Check it out.