Nine years after the death of Mexican artist Alberto Aguilera Valadez, known worldwide as Juan Gabriel, Netflix will launch next October 30 the documentary series ‘Juan Gabriel: Debo, puedo y quiero’, whose only sources are the private videos, photographs and audios that ‘el Divo de Juárez’ recorded and kept for more than forty years.
The two episodes, lasting just over an hour, cover the life of “one of Mexico’s most important idols” from his solitary childhood, “which is what determines what he does in the future,” to the controversial concert at the Palace of Fine Arts, with “unpublished cameras that were not used,” the documentary’s director, María José Cuevas, explained to EFE on Thursday.
“Alberto left all this material to finally make a documentary of his life, both as an artist and as a person. He was a very private person, but he documented absolutely everything for four decades and we feel that he did it so that this moment could come. So that this story could be told,” says Laura Woldenberg, one of the producers.
Without using images other than those of the “twenty boxes with more than 2,000 tapes, thousands of photos, in albums or loose, newspaper clippings and audio tapes”, the series traces his first steps in music, the leap to fame, his relationship with his mother and siblings, life with his children, the energy in his concerts or how he faced criticism for his sexual orientation.
All the work behind the Juan Gabriel documentary
Cuevas justifies that only stored material is used because “the main narrator is Alberto with his archives, which were the ones that guided us to see who the people who were there really were (…) and give them a secondary voice. And then, the third voice is their songs”.
It was “an absolute exercise in patience,” says Ivonne Gutiérrez, producer of the documentary, recalling the review of dozens of boxes.
“There were seven months of work to view and qualify the material,” says Gutiérrez, who later spent 21 months editing the two hours that will be shown on screen.
“Originally it was going to be a film, but when we saw the first cut that was five hours long and we couldn’t take anything out (…) we decided to really tell the story from beginning to end of his whole life, instead of focusing on just one moment,” says Woldenberg.
And although, as the documentary recalls, Juan Gabriel used to say that “a singer should not be seen, he should be heard”, the producer stresses that “this project must be seen and heard”.
As part of the premiere, Netflix will organize a special screening of his first concert at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City’s Zócalo on Saturday, November 8, to pay tribute to one of the most popular artists in the history of the North American country, reported Agencia EFE.
Here is the trailer of the Juan Gabriel series.
Find out more at ‘QueOnnda.com’.
