Published: March 3, 2020 By

trio

University of Tennessee professor, Jacqueline Avila--a musicologist who works with film music and the intersections of cultural identity, tradition, and modernity in the Hollywood and Mexican film industries--will present, "Sombra's Soundscape: Music, Silence, and Nostalgia in Alonso Ruizpalacios's Güeros (2014)" online on Monday, April 6 at 2 pm.  Dr. Avila is being hosted by the American Music Research Center (AMRC) and the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts.

Gueros film poster Güeros did an amazing job of capturing how small people (especially younger generations) feel in such a large, cosmopolitan city that has so many different identities,” says Avila. “This nostalgia for easier times, reflected through the music and the imagery, is a constant and conveys how important the past and memories are in contemporary Mexico.”  Dr. Avila’s presentation will address how the film supplies a new musical paradigm for understanding aural constructions of both Mexico City and the changing identity politics taking place on and off the silver screen.

This contemporary, black-and-white film tells the story of Sombra, a university student in Mexico City in 1999, and his roommate, Santos, during a year-long university strike.  The two find strange ways to kill time and take a trip through the city in search of Epigmenio Cruz, a Mexican folk-rock hero who “made Bob Dylan cry.”  The film won Best First Feature award at the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival, the Best Cinematography award at the Tribeca Film Festival, and was nominated for 12 Ariel Awards (Mexico’s top film award).  

Jacqueline Avila

Professor Jacqueline Avila

Avila is the author of Cinesonidos: Film Music and National Identity During Mexico's Época de Oro (Oxford University Press, 2019), a book that explores ways popular, regional, and orchestral music in films contribute to the creation of tropes and archetypes now central to Mexican cultural nationalism.  She was awarded the Greenleaf Visiting Library Award (2016) to support her research.

“I have always loved movies and Mexican cinema fascinated me because of all the uses of music,” confesses Avila, who grew up in Southern California and remembers watching época de oro films with her dad.  Music always stood out for her, but it wasn’t until college that she deepened her investigation.  When recounting a pivotal moment that led to her research Avila disclosed, “I picked up Sergio de la Mora’s book Cinemachismo and thought that it was just amazing, but lacked discussion on sound and music. I thought I could fill the gap.”

Dr. Avila is Associate Professor in Musicology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and the recipient of a UC MEXUS Dissertation Research Grant, the American Musicological Society’s Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship, and a UC MEXUS Postdoctoral Fellowship (2014-2015).