The North American premiere of Musica Campesina, shot by Chilean filmmaker Alberto Fuguet while he was a visiting resource professor at the Center for Latin American Studies, will be April 17 at the Nashville Film Festival. The screening, at the Regal Green Hills Cinema, is scheduled for 5 p.m.
Musica Campesina, which means country music in English, is the story of a young Chilean who finds himself in Nashville by chance while running away from a personal debacle. He decides to stay in Music City for a while and ends up re-evaluating his life’s choices and what matters most to him. Pablo Cerda, a Chilean television and film actor, has the lead role.
Several Vanderbilt students were behind and in front of the camera during the filming, which took place over 10 days last spring at 48 locations around Nashville, including Vanderbilt’s Central Library. Support was provided by the English and Film Studies departments.
Fuguet is among the leaders of the new Chilean Narrative Movement, also called McOndo, which proclaims the end of magical realism. He said in an earlier MyVU story, “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. People naturally try to reduce and tag and label, and I hope that the movie we made shatters that.”
The Center for Latin American Studies’ Visiting Resource Professors program enables Latin American scholars and writers to spend an intensive month interacting with undergraduate and graduate students at Vanderbilt.
A copy of the film will be available later at the Central Library.