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| Viramundo – review | Viramundo – review |
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| Gilberto Gil is the 71-year-old Brazilian musician, activist and social campaigner who was for five years minister of culture in the government of the much-admired former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. This film by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud follows Gil in his post-political career, a world-music giant with an almost Mandela-like aura. Here, he visits indigenous communities in Australia, South Africa and the Amazon, talks with them, plays music with them, and discusses the experience of being colonised. A theme recurs: his interviewees often talk about being balanced, sometimes precariously, between two worlds. They have absorbed something of the west into their music, and feel conflicted about it. It is, after all, the colonists' way to refuse to recognise their subjects' differentness, and to behave as if they are just lower-caste versions of themselves for whom poor treatment is basically inevitable. Gil's visit to South Africa, and in fact to the continent from which his forefathers originated, is piquant. The film does not actually discuss the history of slavery in Brazil, which is an omission, and I felt that though the film's musical interludes had colour and life, the political discussions were a little blandly right-on. Perhaps Gil's political connections have made him a little more reticent than he might normally be. | Gilberto Gil is the 71-year-old Brazilian musician, activist and social campaigner who was for five years minister of culture in the government of the much-admired former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. This film by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud follows Gil in his post-political career, a world-music giant with an almost Mandela-like aura. Here, he visits indigenous communities in Australia, South Africa and the Amazon, talks with them, plays music with them, and discusses the experience of being colonised. A theme recurs: his interviewees often talk about being balanced, sometimes precariously, between two worlds. They have absorbed something of the west into their music, and feel conflicted about it. It is, after all, the colonists' way to refuse to recognise their subjects' differentness, and to behave as if they are just lower-caste versions of themselves for whom poor treatment is basically inevitable. Gil's visit to South Africa, and in fact to the continent from which his forefathers originated, is piquant. The film does not actually discuss the history of slavery in Brazil, which is an omission, and I felt that though the film's musical interludes had colour and life, the political discussions were a little blandly right-on. Perhaps Gil's political connections have made him a little more reticent than he might normally be. |
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