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marcelo machado - tropicalia - mr bongo - dvd

Genre: Brazil

What exactly is Tropicalism? It is this simple, yet complex, question that a Portuguese TV host puts to an exiled and downbeat Caetano Veloso right at the start of Marcelo Machado's film. The director, who grew up listening to the ground-breaking sounds of Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, the Mutantes andTom Zé, and who did not understand lyrics in English, though had a passion for some- thing called rock'n'roll, takes the audience on a tour through sounds and images and into the history of one of Brazil's most iconic cultural movements. In an affectionate panorama, built up from a miscellany of references, interviews, material dug from archives, images and, of course, songs, the viewer travels through the fertile, controversial and violent years of 1967, 1968, 1969.