Flamenco is a passionate and improvisational, but highly rigorous style of music, song and dance which originated, some say, among the gypsies of southern Spain. Whatever its origins, it captures the essence of the typically Spanish duality of intense feeling wrapped closely in proud self-discipline. In the first half of the 1980s, director Carlos Saura directed three films devoted to the art of flamenco and those who perform it. The best known of these, Carmen, shows a group of students working with a gifted teacher as they attempt to master this complex and difficult art form. In this documentary, the culmination of a lifetime of such training is displayed, as a number of elderly masters of the medium perform one of the best known flamenco dance forms, Sevillanas, in eleven separate episodes.
by Clarke Fountain
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