HEAVY METAL FILM FESTIVAL Opens With Endearing Guatemalan Movie

By Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal

My rating:

March 31st 2011, Downtown Independent Theatre, Los Angeles CA: It was the opening night of the first annual Heavy Metal Film Festival and a small gathering was here to witness the Los Angeles premiere of "Las Marimbas Del Infierno", a Guatemalan film directed by Julio Hernandez Cordon. But before the movie, the director of the festival Samuel Douek addressed the audience and talked about how and why he put together this festival. He also conducted a raffle giveaway where the winner received an impressive looking Dean Guitar. Following that was a special surprise, all the way from Australia. Bridie Mayfield, a ballet dancer from the Brisbane-based group Brutal Ballet Company gave us a truly unique performance in which she danced to a heavy metal track. Her stay on the stage was brief but interesting. I would very much like to see her whole group perform their moves to a heavy metal soundtrack. After all that was said and done, it was time to watch the movie.

"Las Marimbas Del Infierno" is a movie based on a real story about Guatemalan marimba player Don Alfonso and how he dealt with his people's neglect of their own traditional instrument, as he crossed paths with Blacko, a local heavy metal underground legend. The story moves swiftly and manages to keep a grip on the audience the entire time. The sequences showing Alfonso, his godson Chinquilin and Blacko attempting to combine heavy metal with marimba are hilarious to say the least. The audience members found themselves in splits for almost the entirety of these sequences. Each of the three main characters has been individually built up first, but their subsequent interaction sparks life into the movie.

Besides dealing with the marimba, the movie also accurately depicts the Guatemalan society's general outlook towards heavy metal and its musicians. The humor stays constant throughout the duration of the movie, and the roles of the three protagonists have been performed excellently by Alfonso Tunche, Roberto Gonzalez Arevalo and Victor Hugo Monterroso, who aren't even professional actors, something that's quite hard for me to believe. After wowing audiences in Toronto, France and Miami, the movie premiered tonight in Los Angeles, and I feel lucky to be a witness to it. I do hope it gets a US release soon enough, because this is an endearing movie every metalhead should see, whenever the chance arrives to do so.

After the movie, the audience was led into the Five Stars Bar next door, where DJ Will from KNAC.com entertained everyone by playing some ever-awesome old school metal tunes. Besides this, the folks from Nuclear Blast were present, giving out posters of some of their artists to whoever wanted to have one.

Overall, the opening night of the Heavy Metal Film Festival was a great experience for one and all. The remainder of the festival promises to bring some great metal films as well as Q&A opportunities. Are you living in Los Angeles? Are you a metalhead? Do you like watching movies? If you said yes to all three, this event is a must for you to attend. Enough said.

Heavy Metal Film Festival schedule:

Friday April 1st
5:30 pm Meshuggah Alive + Q & A
7:30 pm Promised Land Of Heavy Metal
9:30 pm The Bunny Game + Q & A
Midnight The Seventh Date Of Blashyrkh: Immortal

Saturday April 2nd
3:00 pm Three Days
5:00 pm Absent
7:30 pm Exodus: Asorted Atrocities
9:30 pm Anvil: The Story Of Anvil + Q & A
Midnight Until The Light Takes Us

Sunday April 3rd
2:30pm Blood, Sweat, and Vinyl: DIY in the 21st Century
4:30pm Shorts
6:30pm Heavy Metal Thunder: Saxon
9:00 - 11:30pm (Double Feature) Travelers At The Edge Of Time: Blind Guardian + Something About Metal
Midnight Hated

Looking for the best cable deals? Check out Cox Phoenix!