Chile´'s Film Screening "Violeta se fue a los cielos" by Andrés Wood

About the Director

Andrés Wood (1965, Chile).

After studying economics at the University of Chile he left for New York, where he attended a film course. When he returned to Chile, he made his first feature film, 'Historias de fútbol, ' a box-office hit.

While most of his work is focused on film, Andres Wood is also responsible for producing the most popular television series in Chile called "Los 80" (Wood Producciones). In 2013 he directed a miniseries based on human rights lawyer Carmen Hertz, titled Ecos Del Desierto. The film was part of the special programming marking the 40th anniversary of the military takeover in Chile during the 1970s.
He is the director of some very famous Chilean films and internationally acclaimed, such as La Fiebre del Loco (2001), Machuca (2004), La Buena Vida (2008), and Araña (2019).

Sypnosis:

The film depicts the life of Violeta del Carmen Parra Sandoval and her journey towards becoming one of Chile's greatest folklorists and artists. It chronicles her early guitar playing, her musician father's influence, and her experiences in the rural settings of southern Chile's Ñuble Province.

It follows Parra's project to study Chilean folk music, to preserve and reinterpret traditional composition styles to create the genre now known as Nueva Canción Chilena. It shows her seeking out old musicians and requesting them to sing or play the songs they knew.

The film covers her travels to Warsaw, Poland, and Paris, France, where she performed and visited parts of Europe and the Soviet Union. It also explores Parra's tumultuous relationship with Swiss flautist Gilbert Favre and follows Parra and Favre's stay in Geneva and Paris, including her visit to the Musée du Louvre, where she became the first Latin American woman to have a solo exhibition.

The film depicts the changing atmosphere of the tent where she mounted a Peña, a community center for the arts and political activism, at times lively with artists during the day and music and political activism at night, and at other times desolate or too rainy and cold to be hospitable, leaving Parra suffering from poverty and loneliness.
The story concludes with Parra's suicide on February 5, 1967.

Genre: Biographical drama

Duration: 110 min

Year: 2011

Language: Spanish with English subtitles

Audience: 14+

Host or Publisher GRULA-Embassies of Latin America in Canada