Stories of samba

Saudosa Maloca is a film based on the work of Adoniran Barbosa, the main samba singer from São Paulo, which, in turn, is the largest city in South America and the fourth largest in the world. When we talk about works that bring renowned artists to the silver screen, we usually think of biopics that portray the lives of those honored, but that is not the case with this film; its originality lies in talking about Adoniran through his work. Starting from the lyrical self used by him in a renowned verse – “I Mato Grosso and Joca, built our Maloca” – the script imagines the artist living with his creations, in a kind of fable that transforms into a social chronicle about the city.

As a samba singer, Adoniran was an excellent chronicler, creating striking characters and sambas whose lyrics are extremely visual narratives about 20th century São Paulo. His keen look at the streets of this city that was transforming into a megalopolis captured the diversity of accents of the immigrants that made up the local landscape and thus, he developed his own way of “speaking wrong”, closely linked to the popular man. Northeasterners, peasants, country people, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese were the ingredients of this cauldron whose result is an essentially São Paulo broth (those born in the city of São Paulo) and, why not say, Brazilian.
Thus, Saudosa Maloca – also the name of one of the composer's main sambas – seeks to be faithful to Adoniran's work, flirting with a type of social chronicle that exercises its critical gaze through humor. The film brings together characters from different songs in a single script and thus aims to paint a portrait of a provincial city that no longer exists. Joca and Mato Grosso, his companions from the maloca who are victims of the real estate speculation process and lose their home; Iracema, the muse of the song who ends up being run over and is thus another victim of the motorized progress that comes to dominate the city; the mother of Trem das Onze, who doesn’t sleep until her son arrives; Arnesto invites his friends to a samba but when they get there they don't find anyone. This mosaic takes the viewer to a city of the past, more human and, therefore, the film draws on silent film references in some comedy situations.

And despite being very Brazilian, the film becomes universal by bringing real estate speculation and gentrification as one of its central themes. Terms that did not exist in Adoniran Barbosa's time, but which he always sang about. Upon seeing the disorderly growth of the metropolis, which was tearing everything down to build ever taller buildings, Adoniran never stopped expressing his anguish. I believe this is a very present issue throughout Latin America, but also in other parts of the world. Of course, this is one of the facets of his work, but it was what we focused on, seeking to do justice to the image of the sad clown through which he was immortalized in an alternative cover of an LP released in the seventies. To conclude, I would like to leave a few words from Professor Antônio Cândido, one of the main literary critics and intellectuals in Brazil regarding Adoniran:
“With his solid 65 lean years, Adoniran is the man of São Paulo between the two wars, lingering in the one that emerged like a sooty boa constrictor from the valleys and hills to devour it. Lyrical and sarcastic, malicious and immediately emotional, with the insinuating charm of his hoarse anti-voice, the little hat with the broken brim on the permanence of the butterfly bow from other times, he is the voice of the City. Maybe the butterfly is magical; perhaps it is the moth that sits on the plate of lamps and becomes the nocturnal flesh of lost women. Maybe João Rubinato doesn't exist, because who does exist is the magician Adoniran Barbosa, coming from the coffee carriers to invent the permanence of his city in terms of art and then flee, with it and with us, to the land of poetry, to the ghostly whistle of the lost little train from Cantareira.”