Emilio Estefan, here with his famous wife Gloria, may make more movies.
Lights, camera, action ... Emilio!
By Rene Rodriguez
Originally, Emilio Estefan simply intended to shoot a straightforward promotional featurette about the recording of his famous wife Gloria's latest album, 90 Millas (90 Miles), in which the singer collaborates with an all-star lineup of Latin musicians -Carlos Santana, Arturo Sandoval, Johnny Pacheco and Cachao, among others - to pay homage to old-school Cuban music and culture.
But eventually, Estefan realized there was too much happening in front of his cameras not to expand the project into a stand-alone film.
"I realized I had history staring me in the face," said Estefan, who asked executives at Sony International, the record label releasing the album, to increase his budget so he could turn the featurette into a more ambitious film.
When they declined, Estefan decided to finish the film on his own, armed with two cameras, a $100,000 budget and a passion for the historical musical jams that he was capturing on video.
"This is a very special movie because I want to share the legacy of all these amazing musicians with future generations, and some of them aren't going to be around very much longer,'' Estefan said via telephone from New York. "I wanted to pay tribute to the pain and sacrifice so many people have suffered, being immigrants in this country, in order to keep that sound alive. Sometimes people do things just because they love them, and I wanted to commemorate that.''
The resulting film, 90 Millas: El Documental (90 Miles: The Documentary), has proven good enough to stand on its own. Dramatically expanded and revised from the 20-minute featurette that showed at Little Havana's Tower Theater in August, the movie made its world premiere at the Dubai Film Festival in December, where Estefan describes the audience response as "amazing."
"We had a standing ovation," Estefan says. "Halfway through the movie, they started clapping after every number. And when Gloria performed in concert after the show, people stood up and started dancing from the first song. It was a great moment for Latinos.''
90 Miles, which will screen at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts at 7 p.m. Thursday as part of the Miami International Film Festival, will go on to play at other film festivals around the world, including a major one Estefan cannot announce just yet. The experience also has left Estefan hooked on the filmmaking process, and the music impresario promises 90 Miles marks the start of a a beautiful friendship with cinema.
"I'd love to get into films now," Estefan says. "I want to do with movies the same thing I did with music: To help develop a new Hollywood for Latins to make Anglo films with a little Latin flavor.
"When you've had a 30-year career, it's always great to find a new beginning," says said Estefan, who turned 55 on March 4. "To do something new, especially something I feel so deeply, is really exciting."
For ticket information call 305-405-MIFF or visit miamifilmfestival.
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