The Motorcycle Diaries is next week’s Classic Tuesdays film

The award-winning film The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) is the Classic Tuesdays film to be presented at 6 pm on Tuesday at the National Gallery, Castellani House, Vlissengen Road.

The public is invited and admission is free.

The film is based on an actual episode in the life of the young Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, which he chronicled in his similarly titled typewritten account of 1952, a news release from Castellani House said.

Che Guevara  at 23 undertook an  adventure  on an old motorcycle in his last year of medical school, accompanied by his older friend, biochemist Alberto Granado, and they  travelled  over 5,000 miles from their native Argentina northwards through Chile and into Peru, where they intended to work in a leper colony, before reaching their final destination of Caracas.

But along the way their exposure to the lives of hardship of the impoverished but dignified peasantry of Latin America began the transformation of Che Guevara from a thoughtful and high-spirited upper-middle class young man into the famous revolutionary that he later became.

The film won three awards at the Cannes Film Festival of 2004 and other awards for best film, for its adapted screenplay by Puerto Rican Jose Rivera and notably for its haunting musical score by Gustavo Santaolalla  and the signature ballad, “Al Otro Lado del Rio (On the Other Side of the River)”.

The film runs for two-hours and seven minutes and its executive producer was Robert Redford.