Duende y misterio del flamenco

The flamenco that Neville explores in twenty or so “tableaux” is as much that of the gypsies and popular musicians as the more academic and organised flamenco of professional ballet and Albeniz’s music. Each tableau is treated differently: from oudoor documentary sequences or the mises en scène of the words of the cante, to the almost Hollywoodian sets of the ballets. The film takes us on a journey to Cordoba, Seville, Cadix, Malaga, Grenada, Jerez, Madrid. Each genre is indicated by cartons that are incorporated into the action-painted on tables or walls, carried by a character, washed away by the sea… The film clearly sets out to escape the cinema of the time, which limited the flamenco to a well-groomed myth that denied its popular and gypsy origins and scorned the documentary approach. Neville wanted to make the film into a true and exact “introduction to an art” that is complex, varied and alive.