• Munich Video Awards

    Best Documentary Music Video
  • Encounter of Black Cinema Zózimo Bulbul: Brasil, África, Caribe and Other Diasporas

  • IN-EDIT International Festival of Music Documentaries

Pricing
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Portuguese with English subtitles

Using stories, batucadas, and songs, Diaspora Drums addresses a political and cultural vision embedded in the course of two drums of African origin and their ramifications in Brazil, which move through rituals, cultural manifestations, musical productions, and social celebrations.

Directed by João Nascimento, the documentary intertwines percussion performances and instruments with themes such as cultural racism, traditional drumming, technological drumming, African mythologies, and other contemporary sounds.

From the perspective of important people from the universe of percussion, the film features exclusive interviews with Paulo Dias (Associação Cultural Cachuera); Beth Belli (Regent of the Block Ilú Obá de Mim); Dinho Nascimento (Orquestra de Berimbaus do Morro do Querosene); Hélio Nogueira (Luthier from Atabaques, resident of Morro do Querosene); Silvanny Sivuca (percussionist in the Emicida band); Fernando Alabê (founder of Bloco Ilú Inã); Simone Sou (percussionist); Aluá Nascimento (former member of Stomp); Enoque Santos (dancer); Pedro Bandeira (Cuban percussionist from Aláfia); Dinho Gonçalves (Percussionist), and Marcos Suzano (percussionist).

About the Director
João Nascimento is a multi-language artist, filmmaker, and researcher of black culture in the diaspora. He trained in caruru parties, batuques, sambas de roda, and capoeira movements in the backyard of his house in Morro do Querosene. He graduated in Music Production at the Universidade Anhembi Morumbi and he is the founding director of Instituto Nação and coordinator of Ponto de Cultura Afrobase. Nascimento directed, wrote, and soundtracked the feature film Danças Negras; directed, wrote, and soundtracked the feature film, Diaspora Drums (Tambores da Diáspora); and directed the web series Escola do Samba, produced in 2021 by Kalakuta Films. Member of Frente 3 de Fevereiro since 2004, he co-created the medium-length film Zumbi Somos Nós.

Founding director of Cia Treme Terra and a percussion teacher since 1999, Nascimento has performed as a percussionist in several countries, such as Germany, the United States, France, Cuba, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Norway, Sweden, and England.

Notes on Film

“In the hegemonic cultures of European matrix, the image of drums and their players are associated with values loaded with prejudice, stereotypes and technical and intellectual disqualifications. Diaspora Drums proposes to investigate the erudition implied in the instrument and its community, going through the fundamentals and its contemporary unfoldings. The documentary seeks to break clichés, showing the importance of percussive thought linked to the diversity of artistic productions in the music environment, its relationship with dance, with the body, and with technology.”

– João Nascimento