As Canções

Direction assistant: Ernesto Piccolo
Executive production: João Moreira Salles y Maurício Andrade Ramos
Line producer: Carolina Benevides
Documentation: Laura Liuzzi
Director of fotography and camera: Jacques Cheuiche
Direct sound: Valéria Ferro
Sound editor and mixer: Denilson Campos
Edition: Jordana Berg
Image editing: Marcelo Pedrazzi
Production: VideoFilmes

Facing the camera in close-up against a black backdrop, 18 people sing the songs that marked their lives and tell stories associated with them. They are heartfelt stories of love and breaking-off, reunion, treason, death or happy endings. Songs by Jorge Ben Jor, Roberto Carlos, Chico Buarque or Tom Jobim, even unreleased songs, brought to life in the lips of these people living in Rio. ‘What’s the purpose of music?,’ Coutinho asks Queimado, one of the unforgettable characters in As Canções: ‘There’re smells, but you’re not smelling all the time. But music… you listen to it, you sing, and you’re bound to have memories of it.’ In the words of the director, ‘Music is like a wick that kindles memory, making it more affectionate. This is a film about feeling.’