Going Varsity in Mariachi
Showcase Documentary Feature, Featuring Edinburg North High School's Mariachi Oro
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 - 1:00 PM
EDINBURG CONFERENCE CENTER AT RENAISSANCE, 118 PASEO DEL PRADO, EDINBURG 1:00 PM
STXIFF Going Varsity in Mariachi Showcase Screening Sponsored by the Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District
In a South Texas high school auditorium, trumpets ring out, thick guitarrón strings thrum, and violin bow hairs snap and swing wildly through the air. This is the world of competitive scholastic mariachi. This energetic documentary captures the highs and lows of Edinburg North High School’s Mariachi Oro as a green team strives for state championship. With tough love, \inely tuned empathy, and a fiery passion for the music, Coach Abel Acuña guides the varsity band through a steep competition season and a fraught year in their adolescent lives. Team captains Abby, Marlena, and Bella prove the value of the skills taught in the band room as they navigate life’s challenges on and off the stage with grace, immutable work ethic, and total charm.
Filmmakers Alejandra Vasquez and Sam Osborn transport their audience to this symphonically, aesthetically, and emotionally vibrant world. A directorial debut for Vasquez and sophomore effort for Osborn, Going Varsity in Mariachi is a testament to their ability to explore identity, cultural roots, and pressing social issues with a nuance that foregrounds frankness, boldness, and joy.
ALEJANDRA VASQUEZ, Director
Alejandra Vasquez (Director) is a Mexican-American director and producer. Her short works include “Folk Frontera,” a surrealist \ilm about the exchange of culture and music in the borderlands of Far West Texas that had a broadcast premiere in the PBS special The Latino Experience, won the SXSW Jury Award for Texas Shorts, and is taught in San Diego public schools. Her latest short about the boom-and-bust oil cycles in her rural Texas hometown, “When It’s Good, It’s Good,” a co-production with Latino Public Broadcasting, screened at New Orleans Film Festival and BAMcinemaFest. She cut her teeth on the producing side as part of the teams behind the acclaimed features Matangi/Maya/M.IA. (2018), Us Kids (2020), and Plan C (2023), and is set to produce Nanfu Wang’s upcoming feature. Her directorial feature-length debut Going Varsity in Mariachi premiered at Sundance 2023 and won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition.
DIRECTORS’ STATEMENT
Back in 2019, while filming a different project along the US-Mexico border in Texas, we stumbled upon one of the first fully-sanctioned UIL State Mariachi Festivals, where high school mariachi bands were performing at the same competitive level as cheer, football, and marching band. There was something striking about a publicly-funded arts program that celebrated traditional Mexican culture within a state so politically entrenched against immigration. We quickly started asking around and found our way to the students and administrators of Edinburg North High School’s Mariachi Oro, who were gracious enough to open their doors and allow us to begin the journey of capturing a year in the life of a varsity mariachi squad.
Among the student musicians of Mariachi Oro we found a cultural dynamic that matched our own. All of the students were Mexican-American but their connection to the culture varied dramatically, much like our own connections to our heritage. We found ourselves drawn to the everyday dramas of these students; how mariachi music became an anchor and soundtrack to scholarship applications, falling in love, arguing with their parents, and the decision to leave home. Mariachi played the role that it has for many previous generations: to act as the accompanying music to life’s biggest moments.
Along the way we came to understand that we wanted to make a film centered on an experience that millions of first, second, and third generation Mexican-Americans have, which is characterized best by the phrase “ni de aqui, ni de alla,” of being from neither here nor there. It’s a feeling that we have both felt growing up in families that pull from a hodge-podge of their Mexican and American roots. We wanted to show that the world of competitive high school mariachi represents a concerted effort by a borderlands Latine community to respond to this question of cultural identity and offer its young people some measure of solid footing–to show them the beauty, thrills, and joy of their heritage, and to assure them that they belong.
SAM OSBORN, Director
Sam Osborn is a writer and filmmaker of Mexican-American descent. His debut feature-length documentary, Universe, about Wallace Roney, the only protege of Miles Davis, was Executive Produced by Carmelo Anthony and awarded Best Music Documentary by the International Documentary Association in 2021. His short works include Varsity Oro for Pop-Up Magazine, Night Shift in for Topic, Language Keepers, a hybrid documentary project meant to help sustain the endangered Athabaskan language of Gwich’in, which premiered at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and Eating, a 10-episode docuseries for Topic Studios. Currently he is working with Independent Lens to develop Folk Frontera, a magical-realist documentary about life in the borderlands of Northern Chihuahua and West Texas, which was awarded the Jury Prize for Texas Short Film at SXSW 2022 and premiered on PBS’ The Latino Experience. Going Varsity in Mariachi is his second feature-length project.
STXIFF Going Varsity in Mariachi SHOWCASE Screening Sponsored by the Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District
CREDITS
A film by Sam Osborn and Alejandra Vasquez
Featuring Edinburg North High School's Mariachi Oro
Director Abel Acuña
Violins Joana Campos. Melanie Cantú, Evelyn Escalon, Isaac Escalon, Abigail Garcia,Guadalupe Lopez, Isabella Luna, Gabriella Salinas, Legacy Taylor, Isaac Vargas, Armonia Mariah Guel, Andraya Martıńez, Drake Pacheo, Dorimar Reyes, Marlena Torres, Aydin Vargas
Trumpets Luis Acosta, Erick Brown, Elijah Galloso, Kaleb Skilbred
Producers: James Lawler, Luis A. Miranda, Jr., Julia Pontecorvo, Sam Osborn, Alejandra Vasquez
Co-Producer: Rachel Mills
Executive Producers: Jenny Raskin, Lauren Haber, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Owen Panettieri, Steve Cohen, Paula Froehle, Debbie L. McLeod
Co-Executive Producers: Meryl Metni, Kelsey Koenig, Jennifer Pelling
Director of Photography: Michael Crommett
Editor: Daniela I. Quiroz
Composers: Camilo Lara & Demian Galvez
Sound Recordist: Charlie Vela
