Film about Canecão focuses on some of the many emotions experienced by artists at the legendary music venue

Image from the film 'Canecão - So many emotions', directed and scripted by Bruno Levinson
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♫ MUSICAL DOCUMENTARY CRITICISM
Title: Canecão - So many emotions
Direction and script: Bruno Levinson
Rating: ★ ★ ★ 1/2
♬ An expressive part of the history of Brazilian music was written at Canecão on May 9, 1969 - the day on which an incendiary Maysa (1936 - 1977) inaugurated the brewery that was then open in 1967 in the south zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro (RJ) as a venue for well-produced shows - on October 17, 2010, the day on which Bibi Ferreira (1922 - 2019) performed the last show at the house, then already enveloped in aura mythical.
Attraction of Mostra Brasil of the 18th edition of In-Edit Brasil - International Musical Documentary Festival, scheduled to take place in São Paulo (SP) from June 17th to 28th, the film "Canecão - So many emotions" brings together stories from this house scheduled to be reopened in 2027 as a cultural space.
Perhaps due to the musical preferences of Bruno Levinson, director and screenwriter of the documentary made possible by the producer Raccord, the film emphasizes the takeover of Canecão by the pop generation of the 1980s following the debut in 198d of the show "Radioatividade", by the band Blitz.
Most of the singers interviewed - Bruno Gouveia, Evandro Mesquita, Fernanda Abreu, Leo Jaime, Lobão, Paulo Ricardo, Ritchie and Roberto Frejat, among other names - are from this pop generation, an option out of line with the fact that Canecão was, especially in the 1970s, "the sacred temple of MPB", as Lobão summarizes.
Even though it focuses on some of the many emotions in the title, the film flows well because, generations and preferences aside, the important thing is that everyone experienced emotions in Canecão. Not only on stage, but in the audience, as Zélia Duncan highlights, who remembers the night she was informed by businesswoman Beth Araújo that Canecão had just put up the sign promoting the singer's first show at the venue. Of course, Zélia followed the ritual of debuting artists at the house and went to the Canecão door to take a photo in front of the longed-for sign.
Roberto Carlos remembers in the film, in an emotional statement, the importance that Canecão had in the singer's career from 1970 onwards
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"Canecão wasn't just a concert hall. It was the place where everyone wanted to be", says businesswoman Marilena Gondim, one of the few interviewees who breaks the romantic chain of testimonials about the house. "It wasn't easy to work at Canecão. It was all very informal. Despite being worse, Canecão was better", says Gondim.
Representative of Brazilian music royalty who dominated Canecão in the 1970s, Roberto Carlos - whose first big show, "Roberto Carlos at 200 km per hour!", premiered at the venue on September 3, 1970 - gives testimony that values the documentary.
"Canecão was a very important milestone in my life because it showed the public and critics that I knew how to do more than I did in Jovem Guarda", contextualizes Roberto, highlighting the importance of Luís Carlos Miele (1938 - 2015) and Ronaldo Bôscoli (1928 - 1994) as producers of the show in which the artist stopped being seen as an "iê-iê-iê singer", an expression used by the artist himself Roberto Carlos in the film.
In addition to artists, Bruno Levinson interviews house employees, such as waitresses, press officer Luiz Menna Barreto and artistic producer Jerson Alvim, who died in 2025 at the age of 83. Alvim played a decisive role in the history of Canecão as a mediator between the interests of the house and the demands of artists and businesspeople. The story he tells about the brief impasse between Chico Buarque and Tom Jobim (1927 - 1994) over concert dates is great.
The touch of emotion in the script comes from the reunion between Elymar Santos and journalist Léa Penteado, a press officer whose work was fundamental in making the then-unknown singer's dream of performing at Canecão successful - both artistically and economically.
While picking up Elymar at the artist's house on Ilha do Governador and driving him to Canecão, director Bruno Levinson listens to the singer recounting the saga of having pledged his apartment and car to rent Canecão for one night, on November 12, 1985, in a bold move that worked and earned the singer the invitation, made during the daring presentation, to do other shows at the house, now without needing to rent the space.
Finally, among stories and legends, Levinson's documentary reminds us that Canecão opened the doors to the heavy dances that brought together young crowds in the 1970s, at the height of the Black Rio movement. There are also takes dedicated to the famous show held at Canecão in 1987 by the British band Echo & The Bunnymen.
On the other hand, the script omits the countryman's arrival at the house in 1991, with a performance by the duo Chitãozinho & Xororó, and ignores emblematic shows performed by singers Elis Regina (1945 - 1982), Gal Costa (1945 - 2022) and Maria Bethânia at Canecão, with the exception that there are mentions by testimonies of the anthological seasons of the shows "Brazilian, profession: hope" (1974) - show that brought together singer Clara Nunes (1942 - 1983) and actor Paulo Gracindo (1911 - 1995) around the work of Antonio Maria (1921 - 1964) and Dolores Duran (1930 - 1959) - and "Chico Buarque & Maria Bethânia" (1975).
Anyway, the emotions were so many that they wouldn't fit into the 87 minutes of the documentary. Within the more pop style offered by director and screenwriter Bruno Levinson, the film "Canecão - So many emotions" fulfills the function of highlighting the magic that surrounded a house that, as Ronaldo Bôscoli said, wrote part of the history of Brazilian music.
Elymar Santos recounts to director Bruno Levinson the saga of having rented the Canecão for one night in November 1985
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Source: G1