Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi’s award-winning Chavela Vargas documentary has found a home. Music Box Films has acquired the U.S. rights to “Chavela” and is planning a theatrical release for October, Variety reports.
The doc chronicles the life story of Vargas, an influential singer who “ran away from Costa Rica to Mexico City in her early teens and began singing in the streets. She became successful during the 1950s and challenged mainstream Mexican morals, by her life and her art, especially by singing searing love songs originally intended for men wooing women,” the source summarizes.
In 2000, Vargas publicly came out as a lesbian. She was 81 years old. “I’ve had to fight to be myself and to be respected,” Vargas said in an interview. “I’m proud to carry this stigma and call myself a lesbian. I don’t boast about it or broadcast it, but I don’t deny it. I’ve had to confront society and the Church, which says that homosexuals are damned. That’s absurd. How can someone who’s born like this be judged?”
Vargas died in 2012.
“Chavela” won the second place Panorama Audience Award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where it made its world premiere.
“When I interviewed Chavela in 1991, she was already 71 years old but had not yet performed on a big, international stage or met Pedro Almodóvar, [who considered her a muse]. She was feisty, fresh, and uninhibited, inspired even, to impart lessons about life and love,” Gund commented. “I wanted to know the rest of her story but had to wait over 20 years for her to write it.”
