Documentary Feature Opens in NY & LA
Landfill Harmonic has played over 140 film festivals & received over 30 awards at festivals worldwide
Audience Award: Best Documentary – SXSW Audience Award: Best Documentary – AFI FEST
As my mother and I traveled the local neighborhood of Tiffany Street in the South Bronx picking up discarded furniture, refurbishing and turning them into brilliant Tiffany-like furniture, she always taught me, “What’s someone’s garbage, is somebody else’s treasure.” Landfill Harmonic is a gem of a Spanish-language documentary (don’t worry, it’s got subtitles in English) about a group of impoverished kids whose families survive from living off a landfill, learn to play music from recycled instruments and dazzle audiences in major capitals around the world.
Set in Cateura, a small town south of the country’s capital of Asunción, it is the home to Paraguay’s main landfill turned into a junkyard by its inhabitants who live by recycling and selling its contents to earn a scant living. Though 30% of the country lives in poverty there is a glimmer of hope in this South American part of the world that has literally risen from a garbage dump.
The film’s protagonist and mentor, Favio Chávez is an ecological technician sent to the community. But as a trained musician having played the clarinet and guitar as a child and turned into his church’s choir director at the age of 11, he was struck by the social ills plaguing the children of Cateura: illiteracy, pollution, poverty, drugs and gangs. Intent on offering them an alternative to life he offered them the only other skill he knew, music. Realizing that without instruments there would be no music, he enlisted the help of a local man in the community who signed up to recycle the refuse that defined their lives and craft them into instruments.
As little by little the doors of the world opened up with a performance that started off in Brazil by an invitation from an environmental conference, the kids driven by their own initiative reached out to their idol thrash metal band from Los Angeles, Megadeth. Be careful for what you wish. They were then contacted by the group’s bassist, David Ellefson who was so moved by their story that he made a visit to their town in Paraguay, inviting them to perform with the group and the world and other groups, such as Metallica, opened their doors. Soon they were touring Amsterdam, Colorado, Canada, Spain and Japan, to name a few international musical locales. This is a film that will have you cheering the kids from the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura and their families – and the beautifully recorded music that will move you down to your soul. And you can trust, no garbage was harmed in the process, beyond making beautiful, recycled instruments that produced magical music and no tragedy strikes any of the kids.
OPENING IN NEW YORK & LOS ANGELES
NYC- SEPTEMBER 9-15th
Cinema Village
22 E 12th St, New York, NY 10003
LA- SEPTEMBER 23rd
Laemmle’s Monica Film Center
1332 2nd St, Santa Monica, CA 90401
and
Laemmle’s Pasadena Playhouse
673 E Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91101
@TIO LOUIE/Louis E. Perego Moreno Louis E. Perego Moreno/@TioLouie Founder & Executive Producer of PRIME LATINO MEDIA, the largest East Coast network of Latino multimedia-makers, actors and musicians in bilingual Latino and mainstream media, digital and entertainment. An interactive Content/Impact Producer and Educator who for the past 34 years has owned Skyline Features, a bilingual multimedia and educational production company developing documentaries, television programming and advertising commercials featuring Latinos, Blacks, Women, Urban Youth and LGBT.
Facebook (personal page): Louis E. Perego Moreno
Fan page: Tio Louie
FACEBOOK Group: Prime Latino Media
Twitter: @TioLouie
Twitter: @PLMSalon
Instagram: PRIME_LATINO_MEDIA
Instagram: ElTioLouie
Vimeo: TioLouie
Comments