Veteran Spanish director Saura, who previously brought us passionate performance-film homages with Flamenco (1995) and Tango (1998), has now turned his attention to the bluesy, soul-baring Portuguese music known as fado, with a film that frames the music in elaborate, shimmering, pageant-like stage production. "Like those other two films, Fados epitomizes the style of the titular art. Flamenco was hot. Tango was hotter. Fados, however, is less inflamed. But that's only because fado emanates from a region well north of the loins. Its songwriters and singers plaintively intertwine memory and soul, nostalgia, and romance...The film consists of more than a dozen performance pieces—singers, guitarists, percussionists, dancers, many of them renowned, many revered—filmed in a closed studio. It's theater treated as cinema." (Boston Globe) Fados will hold a special place in film history, as it was the last title to be released under the banner of the venerable New Yorker Films, which closed its doors earlier this year. In Portuguese with English subtitles. more at zeitgeist.com 35mm
2009, color, 1 hour 30 minutes, Portugal/Spain