Upon seeing Rita Indiana y Sus Misterios, one has the impression that Ziggy Stardust has landed with his spiders from Mars right in the middle of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. This is like La Lupe embodying Grace Jones and electroclash being an entirely Dominican musical genre. Through Rita, meringue has never been so close to punk, new wave, rave and above all, psychodelia.
In the video "La Hora de Volvé", the Caribbean is no longer a tropical region full of testosterone and voluptuous brunettes. Au contraire, this is an androgynous world coexisting with a brilliant and colourful collage constructed from paper and recycled footage, cut & pasted and animated in the most basic way, almost naïve yet at the same time perfectly composed, with small, brusque camera movements seemingly awkward but always exact and necessary to build such a hybrid audiovisual piece in accordance with its music, which is a new genre itself.
Ironically, in motion graphic terms, not all that moves or is animated is what seduces me, I prefer excellently composed graphic elements which fulfil their function during the scene before they start to move with acrobatic agility inside the "frame". At first glance, the piece may seem over-elaborate, which is nothing more than the sensation of the unexpected; as the video flows by, one feels how minimalism has arrived in the Caribbean. Each shot has just the right balance to represent the poesy of exile and the return, cold and warmth, electro and meringue, glam and hints of grandmother, everything is there: the airplane flying backwards, incrusted in the suitcase. Might this be what passes through one's head after "taking so much shit and ice"?
Without losing the essential meringue choreographies and Mariela Ortiz's artwork, Noelia Quintero has created the perfect lysergic ecosystem in which Fernandito Villalona and Peaches are united to kaleidoscopize meringue.
Black suits, air guitar, cut & paste and tropical new wave.
Credits:
Director: Noelia Quintero Herencia
Photography Director: Jaime Guerra
Editor: Gabriel Coss
Graphic Art and Animation: Mariela Ortiz
Post Production: Rojo Chiringa & Luna Films
* Translation: Vera Ciria
