Flamenco is a 1995 Spanish documentary film directed by Carlos Saura with camerawork by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.
As a hall fills with performers, a narrator says that flamenco came from Andalucia, a mix of Greek psalms, Mozarabic dirges, Castillian ballads, Jewish laments, Gregorian chants, African rhythms, and Iranian and Romany melodies.
The film presents thirteen rhythms of flamenco, each with song, guitar, and dance: the up-tempo bulerías, a brooding farruca, an anguished martinete, and a satiric fandango de Huelva.
There are tangos, a taranta, alegrías, siguiriyas, soleás, a guajira of patrician women, a petenera about a sentence to death, villancicos, and a final rumba.
They are performed sometimes a cappella, extending the guitar playing in subtle and intense "solos" accompanied often by hand-clapping or knuckles rapped on a table.