La Generación Halley

The film that named a generation

In 1986, director Thaelman Urgellés released La Generación Halley, a film aimed at a young audience that stepped away from the social problems usual in the Venezuelan cinema of the time. The screenplay was signed by Diana Lichy and Urgellés himself.

The title was allegorical: that year Halley's Comet crossed the sky —a phenomenon that occurs only every 75 or 76 years and that will not return until 2061—, surrounded by all kinds of catastrophic and prophetic talk. The expression “Generación Halley” ended up naming the young people who lived through the comet's “threat”, before and after: the generation that grew up, according to popular memory, among guerras de minitecas, breakdancing and the explosion of homegrown pop.

«Halley's Comet passed in 1986 and does not return until 2061. The film that took its name turned that instant into the portrait of an entire generation.»

The plot

The story follows a group of kids whose great dream is to attend a concert by the singer Melissa, while their personal dramas change their lives. The cast brought together Corina Azopardo and Gustavo Rodríguez, joined by Haydée Balza, Koke Corona and Pilar Romero, among others. Melissa herself —the great pop star of the moment— played herself, as the platonic dream of the main characters.

The soundtrack: a portrait of Venezuelan pop

If the film aged like a time capsule, its soundtrack aged even better. Released by Sono-Rodven, with original music and production by Pablo Manavello together with Carlos Montenegro, the album works as a photograph of mid-eighties Venezuelan pop: exactly the repertoire the minitecas spun at parties, clubs and shopping malls.

The big names of the scene live side by side on the record: Melissa sings the title track, “Somos Tú y Yo”, and her Spanish version of “Sweet Dreams”, titled “Dulces Sueños”; Frank Quintero is the artist with the most tracks (three); and the line-up is completed by Guillermo Dávila, Karina, Jorge Aguilar and Manavello himself with several instrumentals. Alongside them appear two international names: Baltimora and Jayne Collins.

«The soundtrack documented the thriving pop scene that developed in the country in the mid-eighties, with the best of the talent available at that moment.»

A box-office hit

The facts: the film was one of the great successes of the Venezuelan cinema of its time. As the newspaper La Verdad reported in 2013, La Generación Halley came to hold ninth place among the 25 most-watched films in the country, with 758,199 box-office tickets.

What this suggests: more than an anecdote, that figure explains why the film went beyond the movie theater. It was seen by an enormous share of its generation, and that is why its name —and its soundtrack— stayed etched in collective memory as a synonym for a whole era.

The minitecas that appeared in the film

The film gathered not only the music of the era: it also gathered the protagonists of its nights. According to accounts from the miniteca community, several of the most popular minitecas of the moment appeared in the party and dance scenes —among those mentioned are Sandy Lane, Betelgeuse, The Drop (which appears in the film as “The Trop”), New Way and others.

The link goes further: the film's own identity is associated with a miniteca called “Halley Generation”, the sound system from which, according to those accounts, the film is said to have taken its name. And one of the legends of the movement, Betelgeuse, records 1986 —the year of the premiere— as the year of its participation in the film, the same year it released its first LP on the Sonográfica label.

Reliability note: the complete list of participating minitecas comes from community sources (accounts, archives and amateur videos), not from the film's official credits; we record it as testimony still to be confirmed, except for Betelgeuse's participation, backed by its own history. Several of them —Betelgeuse and Fahrenheit— have their own entry in the MiniTK Archive of this site.

«The Drop, Sandy Lane, Fahrenheit, Betelgeuse and New Way were some of the most famous minitecas in Caracas; the film is associated with one called Halley Generation.»

Why it matters to miniteca culture

La Generación Halley is the way into this blog series. It is not a film “about minitecas”, but it is the document that best condenses the imaginary of the young people who filled them: their music, their look and their dreams. The soundtrack gathers, on a single record, a good part of the artists profiled here —Melissa, Frank Quintero, Guillermo Dávila, Karina, Jorge Aguilar, Pablo Manavello— and places around them the other stars of the same movement: Franco De Vita, Yordano, Ilan Chester and Ricardo Montaner.

That is why, every time that burst of Venezuelan pop talent of the eighties is recalled, the same name comes back: la Generación Halley. A generation that a comet ended up christening, and to which a film gave a face.