Synopsis
I am Gilda
Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 7, 1996. Gilda, the popular tropical music singer, loses
her life in a tragic car accident along with her mother, her daughter and four of her band
members. Six years prior, Miriam Alejandra Bianchi, who is later to become Gilda, is a
kindergarten teacher, married and with two small children of her own. She’s happy with the
family she made, but feels an emptiness in her professional life. Miriam has liked to sing
since she was a little girl and her father always supported her. That wish gets stronger with
each passing moment. Toti Giménez, keyboard player and producer from the tropical music
scene arranges a casting to find a new voice. Miriam sees it as a chance, but her husband
doesn’t agree. In spite of his negative attitude, Miriam attends and gets selected.
From that moment on she becomes Gilda and starts a dizzying race towards fame. However,
she gets continuously rejected by the record labels — her tuned voice, her skinny body and
her meaningful lyrics “don’t sell”.
Gilda doesn’t fit in with the female musical icons of her time. Up to that moment, women in
cumbia were only sex objects, empty of all artistic and musical talent. Gilda starts to compose
and show her own repertoire as an autor without betraying the cumbia formula. For the first
time a woman talks to other women about their rights, about defending their place and about
reclaiming lost illusions. Without any financial backup, traversing the misogynist
precariousness of the environment, her family’s prejudice towards the working classes and
the harsh opinion that the cumbia circles hold about people who don’t have the same origins,
she accomplishes in five years what takes other artists an entire lifetime.
Gilda becomes the “abanderada de la bailanta” — herald of Argentina’s cumbia tradition —,
and her fans follow her with devoted passion, attesting that she has miraculous powers. To
this she responds:
“IF MUSIC HAS THE POWER TO CURE PEOPLE, WELCOME BE IT”.
Months prior to her tragic death, she records her most successful album, “Brave Heart”. She
goes on a tour around Latin-America, transforms into a popular icon of the tropical music
scene and places this genre in a position of greater prestige. She wins a gold album
for her success in sales and signs a millionaire contract with Mexico, establishing herself as
a thriving Singer of Latin-American cumbia. In the height of her career, Gilda starts to talk
about her death and composes a premonitory song, ‘It is not my Goodbye’.