Vanderbilt students were given a hands-on crash course in filmmaking under the tutelage of Chilean author/filmmaker Alberto Fuguet during his month-long visit to campus.
Fuguet was invited to participate in The Center for Latin American Studies Visiting Resource Professor program, in which notable Latin American scholars and writers spend an intensive month interacting with Vanderbilt’s undergraduates and graduate students.
“Alberto is the ’bad boy’ of Latin American literature, so it was a real coup to get him,” said Ted Fischer, director of the Center for Latin American Studies, who was instrumental in bringing Fuguet to campus in March.
Fuguet is one of the leaders of the new Chilean Narrative Movement – also known as “McOndo” – which provides a more true-to-life alternative to the magical realism used by authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende.
“Alberto and I were talking in preparation of him coming here, and I said, half-jokingly, ’What if we made a film?’” Fischer said. “He was excited about it. So for a month, he sketched ideas. When he got here he wrote a 40-page script and filmed it in about 10 days.”
Fuguet (center) invited his friend Pablo Cerda (left), a Chilean TV and film actor, to star in the film, and put Vanderbilt students to work in front of and behind the camera. Fuguet originally intended Musica Campesina (“Country Music”) to be a short film but now believes it has potential to be feature-length and could be entered in festivals such as Sundance and South by Southwest, Fischer said.
Musica Campesina is the story of a young Chilean (Cerda) who follows a love interest to America, is rebuffed and ultimately ends up in Nashville, where he is forced to re-evaluate his life’s choices and what is important to him.
“I tried to work into the script the (preconceptions) of Latin America that an average American has and also the clichés and myths that an average Latin American has of Nashville,” Fuguet said. “People naturally try to reduce and tag and label, and I hope that the movie we made shatters that.”
The film was shot on a Lumix Panasonic SLR digital movie camera during the 10-day, 48-location shoot. Sites included Riverfront Park, Printer’s Alley, the downtown Nashville bus station and the Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt.
“It was scary to write a script in-situ … but I was able to get a sense of Nashville and, of course, to fall in love with its particular and original beauty,” Fuguet said.
“Working with Alberto was simply energizing,” said Ashley Zeiger, a junior Film Studies major and director of photography for the film. “This project was a completely new form of production for me – one that broke down my previous conventions and made filmmaking more accessible to me with an emphasis on energy and a good story.”
Sarah Childress, a lecturer in the English department and faculty coordinator for Film Programs, who produced the film, was on hand to see the students interact with Fuguet. For most of them, it was their first time working on a feature film and putting into practice the theories learned in the classroom.
“It was a genuine pleasure for me to work with many of the Film Studies students that I’ve taught or known from previous years,” Childress said. “They’re so talented and committed, and their instincts are fantastic. They made the movie – literally. Alberto had the vision, but they were crucial in bringing that vision to life.”
In addition to the film project, Fuguet also participated in a Spanish graduate seminar and held roundtable discussions with students. Fuguet also screened a rough cut of his forthcoming film Velodromo . The Santiago native has been featured in Time and Newsweek as one of the most promising and influential in a new generation of Latino American writers.
“My stay at Vanderbilt was as intense as it was awesome,” Fuguet said. “It was a gift really, an amazing and challenging opportunity. I really learned a lot.”
Previous participants in the Visiting Resource Professor program have included Lucio Renno, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia; and Jesus Martín Barbero, who is widely considered the father of cultural studies in Latin America.
Musica Campesina will be screened at Vanderbilt in the fall.
Reported by Joan Brasher, joan.brasher@vanderbilt.edu
Media Contact: Ann Marie Deer Owens, (615) 322-NEWS
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