Cine Las Americas, the Austin film festival that has been showcasing the best of Latin cinema for more than a decade, kicks off Thursday night with a screening of “Marimbas From Hell,” directed by Julio Hernandez Cordon.
“Marimbas” will screen at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Alamo South. Individual tickets $12.
Here’s a mini-review, written by Joe Gross, to give you an early look at the opening-night film. Look for full coverage of the festival Friday in the Movies section.
In this slight but often smartly-deadpan feature, marimba player Don Alfonso (played by real-life marimba player Alfonso Tunché) has hit a bad streak - he is the victim of extortion, his family has gone into hiding, his old band is angry at him for going solo, and he just lost his job as a playing a restaurant.
Increasingly desperate, he hooks up with his slightly thuggish, glue-addicted godson Chiquilín (Víctor Hugo Monterroso, who nearly walks away with the movie) and they decide to join the marimba’s traditional Guatemalan sound with a metal band, a crew lead by a local metal legend named Blacko González (yes, that is his real nickname, and yes, it is awesome). As you might expect, Alfonso is hard to hear.
Cordon stumbled onto the story while filming his last movie, “Gasolina,” and the opening scene is documentary footage of Tunché explaining an actual problem he had with local criminals.
Cordon spun this into a poker-faced comedy using non-actors, carefully working within their limitations (and his own - that camera sure doesn’t move much). Tunché looks slightly baffled the whole time, as if tracing his life, wondering how he got here. Any struggling artist can relate.
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