Directed by Catherine Gund & Darsha Kyi • Documentary • With Chavela Vargas • 2017 • 93 minutes
Chavela is the captivating look at the unconventional life of beloved performer Chavela Vargas, whose passionate renditions of Mexican popular music and triumphant return to the stage late in life brought her international fame. Born in Costa Rica in 1919, Chavela Vargas ran away to Mexico City as a teenager to sing in the streets. By the 1950s, she became a household name in her adopted country, delivering her performances with a raw passion and unique voice. Just as influential were her cultural contributions; Chavela was a bold, rebellious, sexual pioneer who was known for having many female lovers at a time when being out in Mexico was dangerous. Chavela centers around a 1991 interview–the singer’s first public appearance after 15 hard years lost to alcoholism and heartbreak. In the final years of her life, Chavela openly comes out as a lesbian and rises into her momentous third act, becoming a muse to filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, earning a Lifetime Achievement Grammy, and selling out performances at prestigious concert halls around the world.
Up Next in Music Box Films
-
The Club
Directed by Pablo Larrain • Drama • With Alfredo Castro, Marcelo Alonso, Antonia Zegers • 2015 • 97 minutes
In a secluded house in a small seaside town live four unrelated men and the woman who tends to the house and their needs. All former priests, they have been sent to this quiet exile to pur...
-
A Coffee in Berlin
Directed by Jan Ole Gerster • Drama • With Tom Schilling, Friederike Kempter • 2014 • 88 minutes
Jan Ole Gerster’s wry and vibrant feature debut A Coffee in Berlin, which swept the 2013 German Oscar Awards, paints a day in the life of Niko, a twenty-something college dropout going nowhere fast. ...
-
The Crime is Mine (François Ozon, w/ ...
Directed by François Ozon • Drama • With Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Rebecca Marder, Isabelle Huppert • 2023 • 102 minutes
Paris in the 1930s. Struggling actress Madeleine and her best friend Pauline, an unemployed lawyer, live in debt in a cramped flat. Opportunity knocks after a lascivious theatrical...
