Marimbas from Hell

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Photo courtesy of Pragda.com

Marimbas From Hell

Hard times, a beloved marimba, and a desire to give it all for the love of heavy metal are the gears turning behind this comedy with strains of mumblecore by writer-director Julio Hernández Cordón, who was born in Raleigh, then raised in Mexico, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. The film follows Don Alfonso, a deliveryman and flagging musician whose bad luck drives him to start a band with Chiquilin, his glue-sniffing nephew, and Blacko, a legendary rocker and ex-Satanist turned religious fundamentalist. The name of the band they create? Marimbas from Hell. Cordón blurs the lines between fact and fiction—the germ of the idea came from a surreal scene in a Cordón documentary featuring the real-life Alfonso and his marimba—and challenges notions of what it means to be an artist in the land of the marimba, Guatemala. The film closes Cordón’s tribute to the “people I know who develop projects that are unthinkable in a country such as mine.” See it for one night only at the Chelsea. —Sarah Edwards