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Candombe Get Details and Purchasing Info
Silvestre Jacobi
Documentary 58 minutes 2002
With English subtitles
In Carnival season, the black residents of Montevideo take to the streets to fill the Uruguayan capital with costumes, banners, and drums. The traditional black neighborhoods of Cuareim and Ansina fill with the insistent rhythm of drums as they have since the colonial times when the Spanish permitted the enslaved a short period of celebration to give them the strength to pass another year of hardship. CANDOMBE deals with this music and the men and women who make it. Almost completely unknown in the United States, candombe music is the living legacy of Africa in the Americas. Beautifully shot and poetically narrated, CANDOMBE depicts the ways the venerable tradition of the street parades is lived today by regular people of the Afro-Uruguayan community: the elderly artisans who make the drums, the men and boys who drum, the young women who march and dance, and singers like local diva Martha Gularte, who despite her advanced age, appears every year dancing like a teenager in a low-cut sequined dress. These men and women are pillars of the tradition. Their houses are veritable institutions of candombe, where the drums are made, the costumes are prepared, the songs are practiced, and most importantly, the tradition is renewed and passed on. The film shows us that candombe music is not just for the old; even children barely old enough to walk are shown marching, dancing and drumming in the parades. Filled with the color, rhythm, and poetry of black Uruguay, CANDOMBE is a tribute to this vital expression of community solidarity and cultural resilience.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Something Remains Get Details and Purchasing Info
Luciano Capelli and Andrea Ruggeri
Documentary 51 minutes 2001
With English subtitles
In 1979 the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, ushering in a new revolutionary era in Nicaragua. This documentary chronicles the changes introduced by the revolution, the ravages of a US-backed war against the new government, and the Sandinista's loss of power in the 1990 elections. Structured around interviews with mothers who gave birth on that historic day, as well as other supporters and opponents of the Sandinistas, the film asks what remains of the country's revolutionary past.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
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