Tango Documentaries
See also my lists "Narrative Tango Films" and "Tango Scenes." My (usually brief) comments may be read under "detail view." The order of this list is not a ranking.
List activity
2K views
• 8 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
- 28 titles
- DirectorMiguel KohanStarsAníbal AriasErnesto BaffaEmilio BalcarceInterviews with the musicians and singers from Argentina's golden days of Tango.Tango's answer to "The Buena Vista Social Club."
- DirectorDom PedroStarJuan Carlos CáceresTango Negro, The African Roots of Tango by Angolan filmmaker Dom Pedro explores the expression of Tango's Africanness and the contribution of African cultures in the creation of the tango. Tango was a reflection of the social life of the slaves that were taken to South America - including Argentina and Uruguay - mostly from central Africa, particularly from the former Kongo Kingdom. Director Dom Pedro reveals the depth of the footprints of the African music on the tango, through this rich movie combining musical performances and interviews from many tango fans and historians in Latin America and Europe, including the renowned Argentinean pianist Juan Carlos Caceres.The roots cannot be doubted and never really were by knowledgeable tangueros.
- DirectorChris Marker"Slon" means "elephant" in Russian. As the title would suggest, this film documents an elephant as it dances the tango.A brilliant short by a great practitioner of documentary as essay and art. The normal actions of an elephant are revealed to be uncannily like the moves of a tango.
- DirectorGerman KralStarsMaría Nieves RegoJuan Carlos CopesJohana CopesThe life and love story of Argentina's famous tango dancers Maria Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes, who met as teenagers and danced together for nearly fifty years until a painful separation tore them apart.A great tango couple reunited for a final dance - and their story.
- DirectorsLorena MuñozSergio WolfStarsAda FalconMiguel CiacciAníbal FordDocumentary on the life of Ada Falcón, one of the great legends of Argentine tango history. After seventy years of silence she finally tells her story.The mystery of the great Ada Falcón and why she stopped singing tango.
- DirectorArne BirkenstockStarsRoberto TonetMarcela MaiolaYolanda ZubietaTango as a metaphor for 12 experiences of the Argentine economic crisis of 2001.
- DirectorAlejandro SadermanStarsMarina GayottoCarla AlgieriNatalia ArroyoThis engaging account of one player's quest is a tribute to the greatness of the bandoneón as an instrument and also to the determination of women in an historically male domain.
- DirectorViviane BlumenscheinStarsAki KaurismäkiChino LabordePablo GrecoFinns have a quirky sense of humour - and are a bit shy. But: Tango is THE folk music of the Finns. The documentary discovers the Finnish tango from the viewpoint of the singer Chino Laborde, the guitarist Diego "DIPI" Kvitko and the bandoneonist Pablo Greco. The three Argentine musicians travel to Finland to find out whether Aki Kaurismäki is telling the truth when he asserts that tango music was invented in Finland.Documentary and storytelling are appealingly blurred in this tale of Argentine tangueros encountering the tango of Finland.
- DirectorGabriela ApariciStarsMarkus AllanJulio CovelloJohanna JuholaTango...can also be Finnish. In Argentina we know little about this country and their culture, we usually think of them as completely different society, and yet we dont even know they have their own Tango. In my journeys through that beautiful land I found that link we share, and decided to explore it, to go and unravel the mistery behind the Finnish Tango not only as a musical or dance expression but also to find meaning of this music for this beautiful country in which I found myself interviewing musicians such as MA Numinem and Susana Rinaldi to tango lovers like Elina Lajunen who has the music in her blood, having travelled to Argentina to continue his studies of this dance, and after all this I found that despite of distance between our two contries we are more than kindred spirits.Fascinating documentary about Finnish tango, which generations of Finns have regarded as indigenous to the Nordic country.
- DirectorDaniel RosenfeldStarsAstor PiazzollaDaniel PiazzollaWalter SantoroFor the first time ever the hidden archives of bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla are opened by his son. A cinematic portrait of the worldwide legendary composer who changed tango.An evocative documentary that uses the vocal and visual nostalgia of tapes and films from a family archive to paint a compelling portrait of an imperfect genius.
- DirectorMercedes García GuevaraStarsLa ChicanaFernando OteroLas MuñecasDocumentary about the new generation of tango composers, interpreters and dancers."Tango, un giro extraño" has no voiceover narration but somehow tells the story of a generation of tango musicians and dancers in images, music, and very carefully placed interviews (with no interviewer seen nor heard) with the artists.
- DirectorGerman KralStarsCristina de los ÁngelesInés ArceJulio César FernánA music documentary featuring Christina De Los Angeles and her friends in Argentina.A delicately filmed tribute to the last generation of singers at the legendary tango bar El Chino in its dying days, from the director who later made the widely liked and distributed "Our Last Tango."
- DirectorCaroline NealStarsEmilio BalcarceLeopoldo FedericoErnesto FrancoThe great Golden Age musician and composer Emilio Balcarce teaches and conducts a young tango orchestra in a moving account of the passage of musical wisdom across generations.
- DirectorDaniel RivasFilmed during the international competition and festival in Buenos Aires in 2003, "Abrazos" explores the perennial tensions of tango music and dance: tradition-innovation, Argentine-international, feeling-technique. The artists are excellent, and what they say about their art is varied and from the heart. There are touches of real film making, too, although the cinematic verve of a young tango musician roller skating in the credits sequence isn't quite lived up to elsewhere.
- StarJuan Carlos CopesA very good introduction to the tango culture of Buenos Aires, with some excellent interviews.
- DirectorMartín TurnesStarsErnesto BaffaJuan Carlos BagliettoJorge CarcavalloA teacher of the School of Popular Music in Avellaneda, together with his students, is digitizing around 500 original handwritten arrangements that are kept from Aníbal "Pichuco" Troilo orchesta. Through interviews to musicians from different generations and styles, this documentary makes a musical tour through The work of one the most fundamental characters in the history of Tango and Argentine music.An illuminating tribute to the beloved master bandoneón player and orchestra leader.
- DirectorJorge ZanadaStarsEstela ArcosEleonora BerlanteJulio BoccaImpressionistic look at the tango in Argentina, mixing dance sequences with interviews, archival footage, and atmospheric fictional scenes. The narrative discusses tango's place in Argentine identity, its decline in the 1950s, attempts in the 1980s to revive it, differences between the tango in Argentina and in other countries, its healing properties, the distinctive roles of man and woman in the dance, and contrasts between professional and amateur styles. The archival footage includes some of the mid-twentieth century's best known dancers.Somewhat sprawling and unstructured, but it gives a feel for the meaning of the dance to a culture.
- DirectorKordula HildebrandtStarArno LüningTango Pasión is a passionate documentary about the famous Tango Argentino in Berlin, the largest tango community outside of Argentina and the area on the Rio de la Plata.A compelling portrait of the tango scene in Berlin, striking in how willingly its members criticize it in negative terms. A comparable film about New York would cause an uproar. It has a good deal to say about issues that come up again and again - the relation of Europe to the dance, the standardization that results from teaching, what it means to practice the dance of a culture whose history and language are not one's own.
- DirectorChan ParkIn Buenos Aires, tango is more than steps or fancy movements. Porteneos, referring to the residents in Buenos Aires, describe tango as life danced on the floor. Chan Park, author of a book titled Tango Zen: Walking Dance Meditation, has spent three years in Buenos Aires to discover that tango is about emotion, which is inspired by music and shared between partners connected through embrace while walking together in unison. This documentary film tells his discovery of tango as culture, music, dance, friendship, love, and daily living in Buenos Aires, all of which have helped discover his inner passion for life.A personal view of tango in Buenos Aires.
- DirectorEduardo SpagnuoloStarsLuciano AcostaMartina GarelloCarlos PortaluppiDramatized documentary on the great lyricist.
- DirectorIrene SchuellerA documentary about the desire to get closer to oneself through the embrace with a stranger.An unassuming German documentary that captures the ambiguities of tango and why people love and sometimes are tempted to leave it.
