Years ago I happened upon a film on TV. It was glorious black and white and I remember being struck by the crispness and detail in the images. It had no dialogue and no real story that I was aware of, and appeared to be shot in a country like Brazil. It looked like it was shot in the sixties and one part (maybe 20 minutes) comprised arty and beautifully composed sequences of people around what appeared to be a municipal swimming pool.
For unknown reasons, having not thought of this film for a decade or more, it just popped back into my conscious. And now I’m wondering what it was!
You sure it was from the '60s? I ask because some Orson Welles shot footage in Brazil in, I believe, the '40s, for a project that never got off the ground but was eventually repurposed. Maybe it was that? Some background here.
It sounds vaguely like footage shot in Brazil about the birth of Bossa Nova. Particularly footage of Vinicius de Moraes and the parties he had that were decidedly in the Bohemian lifestyle, where people would just show up and lounge about. But that’s probably a stretch.
OP back - I don’t think it was the Orson Welles film - the immediacy and “feel” of the images is different. “I am Cuba” looks close - and may well be the one, it has been a very long time since I saw it originally. I seem to remember a diving board in my version, but that might be imagined. I’ll track down a copy and watch the entire movie, see if it rings more bells. In any event it certainly looks beautiful. I might also see if the cinematographer has done anything else. It’s certainly the feel I was looking for.
