Arena — Season 1, Episode 490: Bahia of all the Saints
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Brazil's major slave-trading port for nearly three centuries, Bahia has a black population of over 80 per cent which maintains the legacy of African tradition at every level of daily life. Jana Bokova's vivid film portrait captures the spirit of the Bahian people, their music, culture, and most of all their religion - candomble - a fusion of Catholic and African religious beliefs. The film culminates in the annual celebration of carnival.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.