As an opening, the New Year’s Eve fireworks that light up thousands of Sambistas on Copacabana beach. The daughter of streets, beaches and favelas, and the emblematic music and dance of the Brazilian people, samba was invented at the turn of the 20th century by the descendants of slaves from Bahia. Long viewed with suspicion, it was gentrified and sophisticated by assuming new forms, “choro” or bossa-nova.

Groups of percussionists and dancers accompanying each other by hitting on sticks, brotherhoods celebrating the Afro-Brazilian rituals of “candomblé”, elaborate ballroom dances, songs known to all or improvised, in concert halls or open-air cafés, samba assumes the many faces of Brazilian musical art. In Rio de Janeiro, samba schools form the largest conservatory of popular music and poetry in the world. The weekly rehearsals, which prepare the carnival’s parade and competition, unite the crowd of dancers, percussionists, composers, dressmakers and choreographers. As from Friday evening, all year round, the “pagodes”, informal meetings of Sambistas, bring life to the neighbourhoods...

Source : Anaïs Brosaïc

A graduate of the National Cinema School (ENPC) in Paris, Yves Billon directed his first film in 1974, The War of Pacification in the Amazon. This feature film recounts the construction of the trans-Amazon road which led multinationals to expropriate the Indian tribes of the Amazon.
He has directed and co-directed more than a hundred documentaries, including several on Latin America and world music.