Caetano Veloso, rights and freedoms are under threat

(ANSA) - VENICE, 07 SEPT - "I've always had a memoir, my head really likes to remember, let alone just a few days there, but when I had those papers in my hands, the minutes of my interrogation and the notes of my detention, of which I didn't know existence, I do not hide that I am very excited ", and even if with the cold filter of the zoom connection from Rio de Janeiro the emotion continues at a distance for Caetano Veloso when he tells the film that sees him protagonist.

This is Narciso Em Ferias, Narciso invacanza, a special event out of competition in Venice 77.

    Directed by Renato Terra and Ricardo Calil, it relies on the memories and reflections of Veloso on those 54 days in prison under the Brazilian military dictatorship, in 1969, on the pretext of having changed the words of a song.

Telling in detail those days engraved in his memory, the musician, one of the founders of Tropicalism which was not only a musical but also a cultural avant-garde movement, recalls and interprets the songs of those years and the very often similar stories of other artists, including Gilberto Gil, who was arrested the same day.

"Remembering for me was cathartic, I left home thinking of doing an interview and instead I found myself back 50 years with a story that had remained secret for a long time and I was overwhelmed by emotion".

Those were years, those of the military dictatorship of Humberto de AlencarCastelo Branco, less known than its neighbors Chile and Argentina but certainly no less traumatic, in which even a song could lead to imprisonment.

    Today "behind a semblance of democracy - Caetano Veloso told ANSAC, avoiding pronouncing the name of Bolsonaro - there is a more subtle, less clear threat, at the time there was an authoritarian structure, now instead there is almost a contamination, a plot that tries to infiltrate the meshes of the academic world, effectively preventing the circulation of ideas, the affirmation of rights and for culture it is more difficult to affect, even if it always has the possibility of putting the establishment in check if it wants to. The situation is different from 1968, but the way of managing public affairs in my country is often not democratic ".

(HANDLE).