Middlebury Professor Nominated for Spanish-Language 'Emmy'

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – The television series created by a Middlebury College professor of film was one of six nominees for a 2017 Platino Award, which is the Spanish- and Portuguese-language equivalent of an Emmy Award.

David Miranda Hardy’s 10-episode series, Bala Loca, that he wrote and co-produced, was nominated for the Platino in the Best Television Series category. It was the only nominee from his native Chile in the category, and both Miranda Hardy and his wife, Natasha Ngaiza, who also teaches in Middlebury’s Department of Film and Media Culture, were in attendance on July 25 in Madrid when a different nominee, Cuatro Estaciones en Habana, won the Platino.

Yet despite the fact that his series did not win the Platino, the 44-year-old Middlebury assistant professor was gratified to have been nominated. “The way for Chile to continue to produce this kind of high-quality show is through internationalization,” he said. “We need to appeal to investors and audiences from diverse media markets.

“To have this kind of recognition for Bala Loca proves that we Chileans can do it. It signals a way forward. And, on a personal level, it’s a beautiful experience to see other people connect with a project that you’ve dedicated years of your life to.”

Miranda Hardy’s main source of inspiration for the series, which is available on Netflix, were Chile’s real-life investigative journalists. “We wanted to be political and to sharply question the ways in which our recently recovered democracy is disappointing many in Chile. We wanted to capture viewers with a high-stakes crime thriller, and we wanted to develop a mature character drama.

IMDB page lists 77 credits in sound as a sound director, editor, mixer, supervisor, or engineer. He was sound designer for the 2016 Oscar-winning film, Jackie. Bala Loca was his fourth writing credit and sixth producer credit, but he clearly made his mark in the industry in the sound department.

“I hope to continue to work in sound,” he explains. “It is still my first passion, but my main effort now is to create and produce new content.”

He also derives “a great deal of energy and inspiration” from his work with undergraduates at Middlebury College, where he teaches Writing for the Screen, Sound Aesthetics and Production, and other classes. “It is a wonderful experience to share these projects with our students, and to learn from them and the ways the deal with similar creative problems. Students help me keep my creativity fresh.”

Miranda Hardy, who joined the Middlebury faculty in 2014, is currently developing a historical miniseries based on a Chilean rural community in the 70’s. He describes his latest work as “fiction based on our political history.”

“It was a time when simple people – the peasant, the policeman, the store-owner – embodied big political conflicts, the clash between colonial traditions and modernity. And, as in Bala Loca, we are interested in how this bigger conflict shaped the intimacy of our characters, and how the political resonates in the familial.”