La cueca antes de Dios

Directed by Vincent Moon

This film takes us to Chile for a deep dive into cueca, the national dance of Chile. The cueca brava music scenes in Valparaíso and Santiago, which many compare to the tango scene in Buenos Aires or the fado scene in Lisbon (only much less popular and away from tourism), had been going through hard times under the Pinochet years. They had been manipulated and stripped of their radical potential for social commentary; it was only in the early 2000s that many (young) locals rediscovered it… and danced it, played it and re-invented it.