It’s that time of year again, and Rio de Janeiro’s top 13 samba schools are ready:

Brazil’s samba schools go political as funding cuts bite (click on the link for the BBC photo essay)

Beija-Flor samba school says it has been “inspired” by Brazil’s dirty politics. Corruption has dominated the country’s news, with former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva being sentenced to 12 years in prison and top business executives and dozens of politicians under investigation over a huge graft scandal.

Beija-Flor, which has won 13 championships, has chosen to portray the country’s troubles by placing a huge rat on one of its floats.

Beija-Flor has also built a colourful polystyrene version of the headquarters of Petrobras, the state-run oil company at the centre of one Brazil’s biggest corruption scandals.

But instead of it looking like a gleaming, modern building, it has been made to look like a collection of ramshackle huts.

The school’s artistic director, Marcelo Misailidis, says it is meant to show how corruption drives Brazilians into poverty and life in the favelas, the sprawling neighbourhoods where many of Rio’s poor live.

There’s a Hieronymus Bosch Garden of Delights theme party al Leme beach (link in Portuguese). More Carnival at O Globo.

Meet Samantha Mortner, the UK woman leading the dance in Brazil

at the Imperio da Tijuca samba school, she’s best known as “musa gringa” the first non-Brazilian dancer to take a lead role at “the biggest party on earth”.

Rio Carnival 2018
Nice UK Jewish Girl Queenhttps://t.co/cK6N2b4BWp

— CJ (@CJsTweetsUSA) February 8, 2018

Here is last year’s show,

Last, but not least, you may want to watch Black Orpheus, the luminous 1959 classic.

UPDATE
Linked to bY The Other McCain. Thank you!