ISLAMABAD, June 27: The Brazilian Embassy in Islamabad opened its doors to the cinema goers for the 2nd Exhibition of Brazilian Documentaries.

The embassy was hosting the event for four days showing hour and a half long documentaries.

The exhibition opened with O Misterio Do Samba (The Mystery of Samba) in which the renowned Brazilian popular singer Marisa Monte took a journey through the history and the everyday life of the ‘Old Guard’ of Portela – the group of veteran samba players of the most traditional samba school of Rio de Janeiro.

In the journey, Monte was able to recover almost a hundred old samba songs that were almost forgotten. Most of the composers of these songs either did not have the habit of writing or recording them in the old times.

Directed Lula Buarque de Hollanda and Carolina Jabor, the documentary showed, Marisa Monte, walking in the streets of shanty dwellings where samba was born.

The hour and a half long film in Portuguese, with English subtitles, showed her meeting old musicians in the neighborhood of Oswaldo Cruz, in Rio de Janeiro, the birthplace of Portela’s most traditional composers and players and the landscape of this documentary.

With lively music and through interviews the movie unveiled the history of this typically Brazilian cultural expression. In a nut shell, the movie showed how the Samba began by people with passion for music would make up their own lyrics playing random tunes from basic musical instruments, asking people to do away with sadness and to make the best of their young lives.

The exhibition would also feature a documentary called Nelson Freire telling the story of the boy-wonder from the countryside of Minas Gerais who became the most important living Brazilian classical pianist. Filmed in Brazil, France, Belgium and Russia, the documentary followed the life of Nelson Freire through concerts and recitals, from his first contacts with a piano until becoming the renowned musician he presently was. The movie was about a talented man and his lifetime dedication to art and music.

Directed by Joao Moreira Salles and in Portuguese, the film depicted methodic rituals of a quiet piano star, large amounts of rehearsals and the waiting, followed by technical problems.

Similarly, in the film, Master, a Copacabana Building (Edificio Master) one of the most renowned documentary filmmakers of his generation, Eduardo Coutinho showed the reality of the lower middle class in Rio de Janeiro from a unique perspective. Coutinho, revealed the day to day life of 37 residents of people with different ages, origins, histories and lifestyles living together, many times without evening knowing each other.

On day four, the embassy was hosting Entreatos, which showed how director Joao Moreira Salles and his crew had followed the then candidate Luis Inacio Lula da Silva in his presidential campaign.

The result was an impressive record of exclusive backstage meetings and political gatherings that revealed the personality of the man who would govern Brazil for eight years after that.

The movie was dubbed a ‘brilliant’ testimony on a historic moment in the political history of Brazil told from a perspective that was unseen by the general public.

The exhibition will run till June 30.