Fados

Without narration, interviews, dialogue ortexts, “Fados” lets the music speak for itself.Spanish veteran director Carlos Saura haspreviously made documentaries about flamencodance and the Argentinean Tango. Here, heportrays the always dramatic and melancholic“Portuguese blues” (the word “fado” is derivedfrom the Latin word for fate) and its cultural andsocial history. Originating of Portugal, fado wasinfluenced by the music from Portugal’s formercolonies in Africa and South America. In recentyears, as the pendulum swings back, today’sartists in Brazil and Mozambique mix fado withtheir traditional music, or experiment by mixingit with hip-hop and electronic music.The absence of narration and explanatory textleaves the film open to interpretation. Saurauses the screens in his studio to dramatize the music: sometimes projecting black and whitefilms onto it, sometimes hiding the musiciansbehind it, showing only their shadows. Withoututtering a single word, the film poses a numberof questions about colonization, globalizationand the universal language of music.