Alejandra Vasquez is a Mexican-American filmmaker and producer. Raised in rural Texas, she tells tales in regards to the lives of immigrants and activists, usually from rural communities just like her personal. She’s at work on a multi-year challenge about her hometown with assist from the International Women’s Media Foundation and Latino Public Broadcasting. Vasquez directed the brief movies “Folk Frontera,” winner of the SXSW Texas Shorts Jury Award, and “When It’s Good, It’s Good,” co-produced with Latino Public Broadcasting. “Going Varsity in Mariachi” is her first function movie. She’s labored on the award-winning options “Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.” (2018) and “Us Kids” (2020), together with co-producing Nanfu Wang’s upcoming function. As a Series Producer for Topic Studios, she launched the four-part collection “Night Shift” and 10-part collection “Eating.”
“Going Varsity in Mariachi” is screening on the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, which runs from January 19-29. Sam Osborn co-directed the movie.
W&H: Describe the movie for us in your individual phrases.
AV: “Going Varsity in Mariachi” follows a 12 months within the lifetime of a aggressive highschool mariachi staff in South Texas. While the movie is structured like a contest movie that leads as much as the large state championship, the center of the movie is a coming-of-age story about rising up alongside the U.S.-Mexico border and utilizing mariachi as a strategy to discover which means.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
AV: I grew up listening to mariachi music — it’s the music that jogs my memory of my household, of dwelling — however, most individuals affiliate the music with the performers who go from desk to desk enjoying songs at Mexican eating places. So, when my associate Sam and I have been filming a distinct challenge alongside the U.S.-Mexico border and realized that Texas was holding its first-ever state sanctioned State Mariachi Festival, we turned captivated by this world.
What excited me most was telling this sort of story from the attitude of younger Mexican-Americans. I usually return to the saying “ni de aqui, ni de alla” — neither from right here, nor there — a phrase I feel resonates with first, second, third-generation immigrants all over the place. It’s the sensation of being in between two cultures, two nations, two languages, but not feeling fairly at dwelling in a single.
Growing up, I felt there have been few depictions of what it means to return of age as a daughter of immigrants, to intimately really feel ni de aqui, ni de alla, so I wished to inform a narrative that foregrounds that have.
W&H: What would you like individuals to consider after they watch the movie?
AV: My hope is that folks take into consideration the nuances and complexities of the Latino expertise within the United States, and that our tales are joyous, hopeful, and thrilling.
W&H: What was the largest problem in making the movie?
AV: We filmed a 20-person music ensemble at a highschool a 12 months after the pandemic. As you possibly can think about, there have been many bumps within the street! The most difficult a part of the method was navigating such a big group of youngsters. We needed to slender down which musicians to observe after which recalibrate when sure issues began occurring to different members of the staff. Sometimes it felt like we have been consistently enjoying catch up or lacking out.
Making this movie actually felt like going again to highschool – with it, the on a regular basis routine of going to class and the anxieties of attempting to slot in. It compelled us to rethink our method. We realized we would have liked to maneuver to the Rio Grande Valley to spend extra time with the staff off-camera. It was solely after Sam and I relocated to the Valley and began attending rehearsal day by day that we began to really feel like we have been additionally part of the staff.
My respect and admiration for educators, particularly within the high quality arts, has skyrocketed!
W&H: How did you get your movie funded?
AV: We made a brief model of this movie with Pop-Up Magazine — shoutout to Haley Howle and the fantastic of us at Pop-Up — and wished to develop the thought right into a function. We finally partnered with Osmosis Films after making use of to their new growth fund for rising filmmakers. With their assist and steering, we partnered with Luis A. Miranda, Jr., Fifth Season, and Impact Partners. We additionally obtained assist from SimplyFilms Ford Foundation.
We really feel so fortunate to have labored with financiers who’re sort, considerate, and as obsessed with this story as us.
W&H: What impressed you to change into a filmmaker?
AV: During my freshman 12 months in school, I misplaced somebody very near me. It modified my life, my perspective, all the things. I used to be near dropping out or taking a go away of absence, in order a last-ditch effort to proceed my training, I enrolled in a number of movie lessons. I slowly pulled out of my grief-stricken melancholy. Honestly, the Film Studies program at UC Berkeley saved me and formed me right into a filmmaker that leads with curiosity and empathy. I feel experiencing such profound loss at a younger age has proven me the worth in preserving and telling our tales.
In one other life, I would’ve been an engineer. Instead, as a filmmaker, I reside many lives in a single – I meet individuals, locations, and communities that change into a part of my very own story.
W&H: What’s the very best recommendation you’ve obtained?
AV: The finest recommendation I’ve obtained is one thing I’m attempting to observe now, from my dad: benefit from the second, as a result of once you look again, you’re going to want you had.
W&H: What recommendation do you have got for different ladies administrators?
AV: Trust your self.
W&H: Name your favourite woman-directed movie and why.
AV: There are many and it’s consistently altering, so I’ll identify a current favourite: “Aftersun” by Charlotte Wells. I’ve by no means seen a movie prefer it. It’s a heartbreaking, sluggish burn: midway by way of I unexpectedly burst into tears. Wells’s skill to discover reminiscence, household, and adolescence, by way of a coming-of-age lens that’s so transferring but unsentimental is a good present and inspiration.
W&H: What, if any, tasks do you assume storytellers must confront the tumult on the earth, from the pandemic to the lack of abortion rights and systemic violence?
AV: I consider that filmmaking is a mirrored image of your self, so your politics might be mirrored in your work. But I don’t assume that storytellers have an inherent duty to confront the tumult on the earth. On the opposite, I feel that the extra you pressure it, the extra diluted your message can change into.
W&H: The movie business has an extended historical past of underrepresenting individuals of shade onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — detrimental stereotypes. What actions do you assume should be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world extra inclusive?
AV: There’s clearly a ton of labor that must be finished on this entrance, particularly in placing individuals in positions of energy from marginalized backgrounds. But I’ve been inspired by my expertise making my first function. So most of the gatekeepers and financiers we’ve met have been from numerous backgrounds and have embodied a whole lot of the beliefs that we appear to be striving for.
This is my very own expertise and only one out of many, however I’m grateful that it has been a constructive one and hope that it displays the place the business is headed writ massive.