The year Elvis Presley died in Memphis, punk exploded in London.
It was 1977 and the world was changing.
Former idols of the music industry sank as young audiences clamored for the grime and fury that those sugar-coated old figures could no longer deliver.
The death of that boy who once revolutionized the history of rock and roll was the symbol of the end of one era and the birth of another.
45 years later and many kilometers away, Jalisco has relived that clash of realities.
The 37th Guadalajara International Film Festival opened with
Elvis
, a biopic loaded with artifice about the excessive life of the king of rock directed by Baz Luhrmann.
A few days later, the same event has seen the premiere of
Scotland is not a bank
(Sensational attack, 2022), a fake documentary made in Jalisco about a
playback
band that only played on the most marginal and
underground
circuits : an acid satire;
an apology for failure;
a punk anti-biopic to laugh at everything that this Saturday won the 'Made in Jalisco' prize awarded by the festival.
Cristian Maevan is a forty-something punk who lives in Guadalajara.
He has never been able to get over having played in Los Nuevos Maevans, a group that was half known twenty years ago.
The documentary begins with interviews with fake music experts who talk about the importance of Los Nuevos Maevans and old fans of the band who remember their concerts.
Although it seems like a niche plot, it is a universal story: the passage of time and the impossibility of staying in the past.
Cristian spends his days between demonstrations, strikes and concerts.
He lives in a half-built building with other punks.
Although he speaks of a collective way of life, in resistance to capitalism, the reality is that he does not have a peso in his pocket.
He is a caricature of what he once was.
So he decides to contact his old bandmates to give one last concert with Los Nuevos Maevans, although they don't pay much attention to him.
Along the way, he will suffer a tremendously comical descent into the abyss.
One misfortune after another with a point of surreal parody: ask for a loan at a bank to pay for a meeting record, go to a PRI rally in search of funds...
Cover of 'Scotland is not a bank' (Sensational attack, 2022).
SENSATIONAL ATTACK
“At first it was a satire, I was going there, to make a satire of
Elvis
-type movies , but then everything is destroyed,” explains Carlos Matsuo, one of the film's directors.
Sitting next to him, in the cafeteria of the Cineteca de Guadalajara, is the other director, Cristian Franco.
Matsuo has experience in cinema, for Franco it is the first time.
He is dedicated to the visual arts: “The idea of tackling the issue of
hardcore
aesthetics comes from an old project.
Los Nuevos Maevans was a
hardcore
band that lip-synced, we did pure mimicry, we didn't know how to play.
Carlos wanted to make a documentary about music, I was doing
performance
, and we decided to get together”.
At times, they themselves seem victims of their own parody.
Franco created a fake record label for Los Nuevos Maevans.
To give a credible appearance to the web page, twenty bands were invented.
Scotland is not a bank
was the name of one of them.
The shooting followed the same line.
There was hardly any script, most of the film was an improvisation.
They say they had problems because the
camera they used to record
broke down .
The financing was almost nil and all the work was done in the most absolute precariousness, to the point that after the trips to shoot outside of Guadalajara they returned with empty pockets.
They finished the assembly a month before the festival, but they didn't even know if they were going to be able to present the film: they didn't have the money to adapt it to the format required by the organization.
The New Maevans have existed on and off since 2002.
Scotland is Not a Bank
was a way of closing the project.
"It was a creative conflict, how did we make it so that it didn't become a documentary about a band that lip-
synched
, but how to make the film tease you again with the same nature that the group did in the
performance" .
They decided to do without actors, act themselves, enlist friends and other artists to participate.
“
It was very bumpy and fun, very complex.
Suddenly we analyzed the material and said 'we're doing shit, where is this going, what are we doing?', but in the end we're happy”, says Franco.
Halfway through the film, the story becomes chaotic, it seems that it has no direction, while misfortunes accumulate in the life of the protagonist.
"There was a time when we reflected and thought we have to destroy this, it doesn't have to have any charm," Franco synthesizes.
“That was what I most enjoyed working on, having the freedom to be able to destroy the project, completely change course, it goes here and then elsewhere,” adds Matsuo.
The only requirement was to make a film about the most absolute failure and against nostalgia.
A performance for the big screen.
In Jalisco, punk has not died, it has only found a taste for defeat.
Cristian Franco and Carlos Matsuo, directors of 'Scotland is not a bank', at the 37th International Film Festival in Guadalajara.Roberto Antillón
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