Coming to HBO Latino tomorrow, Friday, September 25:
FANDANGO AT THE WALL
Director:
Varda Bar-Kar
World Premiere:
Cinequest 2020
Select Festivals:
Heartland, Calgary, San Diego Latino, Atlanta, Florida, Cleveland
About:
Afro Latin jazz musicians from NYC unite with Mexican musicians to stage a small simultaneous concert on both sides of the US/Mexico border wall.
Varda Bar-Bar’s slight film follows its producer, Kabir Sehgal, who unites with Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra’s Arturo O’Farrill to travel around Veracruz Mexico to identify and profile musicians who specialize in the region’s local son jarocho folk music tradition. They gather these and other musicians to stage a unifying concert – a fandango – on both sides of the border, then take the concert to other cities, notably NYC, where the bulk of the performance footage was filmed. Of interest chiefly for fans of the profiled music, the doc suffers from a repetitive, survey structure that makes the proceedings feel far too long.
what (not) to doc 