The Bossa Nova is a quintessentially Brazilian form of music. Born of the Samba and, controversially in some people’s minds, American jazz the late fifties saw this new form of youth music burst onto the club scene. It flourished briefly between 1958 and 1963...

Bossa Brazil: Stories of Love - The Birth of Bossa Nova (Coisa Mais Linda: Histórias e Casos da Bossa Nova, 2005), is a detailed musical documentary by Paulo Thiago. The film won Leandro Lima a Crystal Lens award at the 2006 Miami Brazilian Film festival for Best Sound and was nominated for a Cinema Brazil Grand Prize for best documentary in 2007.

I do have a bit of a problem with the Bossa Nova as a musical form. Although rhythmically distinctive it is primarily associated with softly strumming guitars, languid vocal tracks and an overall sound that feels like you are being smothered with a feather pillow.

Partly this comes from its root in the Samba, but I think it has more to do with its country of origin. Shut your eyes when a Bossa Nova is playing and you’re quickly transported to the Copacabana, warm beaches, dusky maidens and a long cold glass of booze. This is music that forces you to feel relaxed. Shame then that so many elevator manufactures and stores adopted it, which then marketed the music as bland crowd control.

Unless you’re a fan of the Bossa Nova most of the music on offer here will be new, though many over a certain age would have heard 'The Girl From Ipanema', one of the songs which made the successful transition into the American scene. For fans of Frank Sinatra and his rat pack chums other songs will feel familiar.

The documentary is near perfect, as far as content is concerned. A lot of the originators of the movement remain alive and the story is told using contemporary interviews and rare archive footage with an absolute bucket load of performances to savour. Some of the editing is a bit rough in places, with some sequences cutting between shots too quickly, giving an unnerving staccato effect to a few of the interviews.

Roberto Menescal and Carlos Lyra, who reminisce about their time at the Rio bars watching and being involved in the creation of a new musical form, essentially host the film. To be honest if you’re interested in the evolution of music then this documentary is certainly informative. The audio is stereo, but clear. Let's face it, this music would have been pressed in vinyl making a 5.1 remix an odd and unnecessary addition.

For extras you get the bonus song selection (28 min, 18 sec), which contains a fairly large number of performances.

8

Charles Packer