CHAVELA: Catherine Gund & Daresha Kyi's bio-doc offers us a chance to learn about a famous Latin American diva/chanteuse

What was it like to be a lesbian in Costa Rica and then Mexico nearly a century ago -- while at the same time being one of that latter country's most famous "cult" singers? The new documentary, CHAVELA, produced and directed by Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi, explores this iconic performer, Chavela Vargas, her early history and musical debut, struggles with alcohol, enforced retirement and eventual return to performing and finally enormous international acclaim. This is a wonderful and rich tale, and it's told here well enough, if you hold on through the very moving finale, to make the experience worthwhile, even for those of us, like TrustMovies, who had never before heard of this unusual woman.

The film-making team of Gund and Kyi, shown above with the former on the left, have assembled enough archival material to give us a visual approximation of Chavela's early years, along with the kind of parenting experience no child should ever have to endure.

This would insure the sort of loss and betrayal -- by both her family and the local priest -- from which the singer, shown at left in her younger years and below in the older, would never recover and which would set the stage, it seems, for all future relationships.

We hear about and see some of those relationships, via photos and film of the day, and in the interviews with a few of the folk who knew her then and are still around to tell us about her.

Chavela was a lesbian in a time and in a country when and where one simply did not acknowledge this. Still, she managed to live a rather remarkably "free" life -- performing, drinking and womanizing like any male celebrity of the day.

Rumors about her life and loves probably outdid her actual exploits -- but perhaps by not very much. Part of the film's fun comes from never quite being sure which is which.

Along the way we meet famous Mexican celebrities of the time -- from singer José Alfredo Jiménez to Frida Kahlo (there's some surprising archival footage of the latter!). Chavela's alcohol addiction is given its due, as is her triumphal return to cabaret that involves a nice Judy Garland moment. But as the tell-it-all documentary makes clear, this was one a hugely difficult, even violent woman, directing that violence to those around her, including the companion, below, right, who appears to have been most responsible for her success in later years.

Once film director Pedro Almodóvar appears on the scene as a huge fan of the singer (he used her songs in several of his films), Chavela makes her successful debut in Spain, and then, thanks to the "push" of the filmmaker, in Paris, too. Even to the Bellas Artes in Mexico. Finally, after some 40 years, the singer has moved from cabaret to actual theaters and concert halls.

The film's weakest point is that it never is able to let us experience the performer's songs at all fully. We see clips of her performing and see the lyrics translated into English, but the experience, both visually and aurally, is too distanced and puny to give us anything like full access so that we can understand why she is said to have commanded the stage so thoroughly. Yet her struggle, a continuing thing, proves tremendously moving -- in particular her life-long yearning for the love of a mother who never gave it. That, it would seem, was the single constant in Chavela's sad but long and full life.

From Music Box Films and running 93 minutes, the documentary has its theatrical premiere this Wednesday, October 4, at New York City's Film Forum, and then on Friday, October 6, opens in Los Angeles (at Landmark's NuArt), San Francisco (at Landmark's Opera Plaza), Berkeley (at Landmark's Shattuck Cinemas) and Santa Barbara (at the Riviera Theatre), and subsequently at another dozen cities across the country. Here in South Florida, it will play Miami's Tower Theater, Regal's South Beach and The Classic Gateway in Fort Lauderdale starting Friday, October 27. Click here and then click on THEATERS to view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

In THE FLIGHT FANTASTIC, filmmaker/trapeze lover Tom Moore gives us The Flying Gaonas

Not much of a circus fan, TrustMovies knew nothing about the famous mid-20th Century first family of the trapeze, The Flying Gaonas. But he is awfully pleased that theater director Tom Moore, of 'Night Mother and Grease (how's that for diversity?) -- who, with his new film, THE FLIGHT FANTASTIC is now a fledgling documentarian -- has brought that family to our attention. These guys (and a few gals, too) are worth knowing about and particularly seeing in action up in the air.

Mr. Moore, who, from the only photo we were given (at right), is clearly an aerial lover himself, and this comes through in frame after frame of his documentary, which,as well as offering up a lot of history of the trapeze (and trampoline), spends quite a bit of time watching these amazing athletes do their stuff in the air. If the doc takes a little time finding its footing, hang on a bit and you'll be in for one hell of an airborne ride. Begin-ning with a memorial, the movie cuts to the grounds where the Ringling Brothers Circus once stood and which, today, houses the Gaonas family's trapeze school.

We view students in action at the school, and after a time watching them miss their marks makes us appreciate all the more the wondrous timing and grace of professional trapeze artists. ("If you make everything perfect," notes one Gaonas during the course of the film, "nobody will realize how difficult it all is." Which is why trapeze artists sometimes deliberately miss their mark.)

With the help and cooperation of the Gaonases, Moore has assembled an enormous collection of archival footage -- of the family (in the early days, above, and at the height of its career, below) of course, but also of trapeze history, which turns out to be every bit as fascinating as the aerialists themselves.

In fact, the most delightful extended segment has to do with another trapeze artist and his flying family of a generation earlier: Alfredo Codona, (shown below)at a kind of hero for Tito Gaonas, who (unless this story is apocryphal) discovers Codona's quite decorative grave site while walking through a graveyard in Inglewood, California. The filmmaker tells this Codona tale as if it were a silent film, in which the story and the style fit perfectly. Were the rest of the movie as good as this section, The Flight Fantastic would be a classic.

As it is, it's still very good. with memorable aerial shots, a fine family story, and especially extended sections on how the Gaonas family brings trapeze art into the lives of so many people -- including some kids with cancer and other debilitating diseases who experience the trapeze in their own, quite moving manner. (One of these sections brought sudden and unplanned tears to my eyes.) Trapeze therapy evidently can work surprisingly well -- on a wide array of people and on various problem scenarios.

We also learn in another extended section how the famous 1956 movie Trapeze figured in the lives of the family and acted as a strong inducement for Tito (above, center) and his crew to learn and exhibit ever more amazing aerial feats.

All in all, the documentary should prove a treat for trapeze lovers and a welcome surprise for anyone, like me, who is new to the art/sport.

The Flight Fantastic opens this Friday, April 1, in New York City at the Cinema Village, where there will be Q&As held during opening weekend. Elsewhere? Not sure. But perhaps as word-of -mouth builds, we'll see the film opening in other cities, too.