people playing violinOrquesta Tipica

Barrels Ale House
Thursday 27 23.00

Argentina, 2007, 86 min
Colour, DVD
Spanish, with English subtitles

dir: Nicholas Entel
editor: Pablo Farina
dop: Santiago Melazzini
music: Orquesta Típica Fernández Fierro

production company: Red Creek Productions
and print source

Director’s profile:
Nicolas Entel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He studied film and broadcast administration at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires, and Boston University. Since 2000, he has divided his time between Buenos Aires and New York City, where in 2002 he co-founded Red Creek Productions. The company now has offices in New York, Buenos Aires and Costa Rica. Orquesta Tipica is his first feature and has been shown at many international film festivals including the 2006 Beverly Hills Festival, where it won the Audience Award.

Echoing the musical tradition of the Barrels basement, Nicholas Entel’s engaging documentary Orquesta Tipica (Tango or Death) tells the compelling story of one of the first new Tango orchestras to emerge from Argentina in decades. Tango, with its unique blend of European and African rhythms, gained popularity among immigrants arriving in Buenos Aires at the end of the 19th Century. After World War II, the turmoil in Argentinian politics resulted in many artists being blacklisted or even imprisoned. Ultra-conservative military regimes considered popular gatherings and art to be dangerous and gradually closed venues down. Tango slowly lost its popularity among Argentinian youth, who soon took to the new and less elaborate musical acts being pushed by the foreign-owned record industry.

At the turn of the millennium a group of students at the School of Popular Music of Avellaneda, a working class suburb of Buenos Aires, set out to present a reinterpretation of tradition of the Tango, through the formation of Orquesta Típica Fernández Fierro. The film opens with the 12-person orchestra preparing for a performance and arguing with the police on the streets of Buenos Aires. It then follows the orchestra over several months on a tour of Europe, exploring the characters and personal histories of various key members, and climaxes with them recording a piece of music in partnership with the world famous Argentinian bandoneonist, Daniel Binelli.

Orquesta Tipica is a film about refinding and redefining cultural identity in a period of mass globalization, where everything is the same everywhere. It offers a vigorous and exciting glance at the music most associated with Argentina, through a group that is willing to embrace its musical roots. A must for music and Tango lovers everywhere.