Well-known as Gustavo Dudamel is as a young man who rose meteorically to star in concert halls of the world and to become music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, word of his role in Alberto Arvelo's upcoming The Liberator (about Simón Bolívar) comes as news. Dudamel is the composer of the film score, but in the press release a page and a half in small font speaks only of his conducting career, not a word about his composing background.
We'll try to plug that hole, but first — about the film. It is Venezuela's entry for Best Foreign Language Oscar at 87th Academy Awards, premiered recently at the Toronto International Film Festival. Starring Édgar Ramírez (of Carlos and Zero Dark Thirty) and Juana Acosta, the film chronicles the story of Bolivar's struggle for independence in Latin America. Revered in the continent's countries, Bolivar has set some amazing statistics: he rode over 70,000 miles on horseback, his military campaigns covered twice the territory claimed by Alexander the Great.
The Liberator opens on Oct. 3 in San Francisco's Century 9, and theaters around the Bay.
Venezuelan-born Arvelo's best-known films are One Life and Two Trails (1997) and A House with a View of the Sea (2001); as a professor at the National School of Cinema in Mérida, Venezuela, Arvelo initiated an original film movement known as “Cine Átomo,” focused on creating opportunities for young Latin American directors.
In 2010, Arvelo directed the stage portion of a multimedia opera of Cantata Criolla for the LA Philharmonic, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel and starring Helen Hunt and Édgar Ramírez. His documentary To Play and to Fight (2006) deals with the lives of several children in the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra System, the organization from which Dudamel and his Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar emerged. Arvelo's next project was Dudamel: Let the Children Play (2010), about El Sistema's spread around the world.
Now, as to Dudamel's work as a composer: soon after taking up the violin at age 10, he began to study composition. Extensive search about his compositional work finally turned this up:
Dudamel composed the score to the new movie Liberatador, about Venezuelan hero Simon Bolivar, screening this week at the Toronto International Film Festival.
And that's all we know. Except for this: I saw a preview, and both the film and the score are pretty good.