By: Miguel Ernesto Yusty

THE JOURNEY OF THE MARIMBA is a documentary directed by Marino Aguado, premiering at the Cartagena Film Festival in 2023. Aguado is known for exploring topics of cultural interest, as demonstrated by his previous work, ZAPATA EL GRAN PUTAS, released in 2020. Now, with THE JOURNEY OF THE MARIMBA, he traces the origins of the musical instrument from the African continent, through Europe, to the Americas, both North and South. It is a project of Colombia's regional public television network, Telepacífico, in collaboration with Señal Colombia, the national public broadcaster.

THE JOURNEY OF THE MARIMBA is a cinematic documentary that originated on television and premiered at a film festival. It reflects the evolution of film production in Colombia, where there was significant growth in feature film production during the 1980s. This growth allowed for the training of a large number of professionals who, when absorbed by television, ushered in a golden age for the medium in the country. It is therefore interesting to see how today, in the 21st century, works like THE JOURNEY OF THE MARIMBA are making the leap from television to movie theaters.

Technological change has allowed the works of talented directors, like Aguado, to transition from one medium to another. In addition to the appropriate use of new tools, the administrative work of managers like Ricardo Bermudez creates the conditions for these large-scale film projects to be realized. Thanks to them, THE JOURNEY OF THE MARIMBA is also the journey of cinema itself, adapting to new circumstances to tell the stories necessary to understand, through images and sounds, the evolution of cultural processes.