Emicida: AmarElo - It's All for Yesterday

The Theatro Municipal is the grandest hall in Sao Paulo. Emicida walks onto its stage on 27 November 2019. The documentary is about that night but does not stay inside the concert; between the songs it goes into the Black history of Brazil. The same hall held the Modern Art Week in 1922, a week counted as the country's cultural starting point. In 1978 the Unified Black Movement was founded. In 2019 a rapper stands on that stage. The film sets those three moments side by side and measures the distance between them. Fred Ouro Preto directs. Besides Emicida, Fernanda Montenegro, Gilberto Gil, Zeca Pagodinho and Pabllo Vittar appear. It is a Brazilian production. The documentary was released on 8 December 2020. The film is divided into three parts, named planting, watering and harvesting. The concert was given in November, which is Black consciousness month in Brazil. The matter it treats is inheritance; Emicida describes his own work as the continuation of those who came before him. The documentary takes in family history too; his mother and his brother are inside the narrative. Concert footage and archive material are cut against each other throughout. The narrative names racism directly and does not slide into a celebratory tone. Its limit is form; the narrative is scattered, the subjects many, and the concert and the history sometimes interrupt each other. Who it is for: viewers who like music documentaries and are curious about Brazilian culture. Who it is not for: it is scattered, it asks for context, and the ending is emotional.