Emicida: AmarElo - It's All For Yesterday (É Tudo Pra Ontem)

When I’ve heard that this historic concert was going to be released on Netflix I got super excited with the idea of being able to watch the live version of AmarElo, one of the best albums of 2019, by Emicida.

Emicida: AmarElo - It's All For Yesterday (É Tudo Pra Ontem) - Netflix, 2020

Must say I got a little frustrated when I realized that it was actually a documentary with excerpts from the show and not the whole show, but turns out that little I knew that the experience of learning about the stories behind the songs (and much more) would make the whole experience ten times better! It’s the history of Brazil. A history of the African-Brazilian people through art, music, politics, and social events. It’s exciting, it’s powerful, it’s sad, it’s shocking, it’s all of that and much more!

Sometimes it’s mindboggling to think about how far we’ve come in so many ways, but how far we still are from being able to live peacefully with our differences of race, genre, class. It feels like if for each year we advance in the future, we are forced to set back many more.

In a strange year where so much happened while we were all forced to stay home, this movie becomes an instant classic, absolutely urgent and necessary!

Song Exploder and the Magic Behind The Scenes

Over the last decade working as a freelance photographer, one of my favorite things to shoot was the behind the scenes of creative people working on their medium. From musicians to architects, to filmmakers, I’m always fascinated by their thought processes and love witnessing art being created right there in front of me. As much as I enjoy photographing many other things, that was always a sweet spot for me.

Mars Motel @ Virtue and Vice Studios | 2018 | © Leo Mascaro

With that in mind, it’s easy to understand why Song Exploder was meant to become one of the most inspiring things I would watch this year. Song Exploder (the Netflix show) is based on the Podcast of the same name with the premise of “A podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.” — I think you know where this is going, right?

After having listened to a lot of episodes and binge-watching the first season of the tv show, it’s pretty obvious to me that they both act as perfect companions, in the sense that it’s impossible to choose one format over the other. The beauty of the podcast is relying on your ears to put all the pieces together and imagine the whole situation in front of you. At the same time, the advantage of the tv show is being able to see everything that they’re talking about translated into (incredibly produced) imagery. At the end of each episode (in both formats) the song is played in its full version for the first time and, like magic, it’s like you can finally connect all the pieces and from that moment on, you will never listen to that song the same way anymore. And while in the podcast you get to close your eyes and pay full attention to the song, in the tv show we are gifted with an incredible visual experience (unique to each episode) of the song and lyrics, like this one from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Wait for It”:

This is an excerpt from the Netflix show "Song Exploder" in which the musicians talk about the certain songs, and how it came about. In this episode Lin-Manuel Miranda talks about the song "Wait for it" from the smash hit musical "Hamilton". and this animation plays in the end with the entire song. Executive Producers: Hrishikesh Hirway, Morgan Neville Executive Producer: Caitrin Rogers Co-Executive Producer: Dominic Musacchio Editor: Lee Rosch Post Producer: Will Mavronicolas Assistant Editors: Richard Andrews Madison Cazares Production Co: Tremolo Productions My role was to create the animation segments for the Li-Manuel Miranda's episode for "Song Exploder"

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3 Brazilian movies on Netflix

If you’re into foreign films and are looking for something different to watch on Netflix, check it out this three great Brazilian movies available on the streaming service right now:

• Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho), 2016

The final holdout in her historic beachside building in Brazil, a retired music critic refuses to sell her apartment to developers bent on demolition.

• The Way He Looks (Daniel Ribeiro), 2014

A new classmate transforms the daily life of a blind teenager who longs for independence and disrupts his relationship with his best friend.

• The Man From The Future (Cláudio Torres), 2011

Accidentally inventing a time machine, Zero returns to college to avoid losing his dream girl. But how many times will he have to change the past?