In Bala, Wales, in 1882, a farmer named Dafydd Jones challenged his cousin to a race on horseback. Jones rigged the race, giving his cousin his own horse in the knowledge that it would turn for his house rather than reach the finish line. Unfortunately, his cousin fell and was killed. Jones is thought to have escaped the wrath of his family by fleeing to South America. This, in a roundabout way, contributed to the creation of a thriving Welsh community in Patagonia, the development of the understandably obscure genre of Welsh-Argentine pop music – and a debut feature film by Gruff Rhys, who is not only the lead singer of Welsh rock band Super Furry Animals, but is also related to the disgraced Dafydd Jones.
A blend of magical realist road movie, personal quest and social history, Rhys's movie Separado! is a freewheeling adventure of the kind you might expect from a man whose past projects include a concept album on the life of bankrupted car magnate John DeLorean. It begins with Rhys zapping from north Wales to Patagonia and back, via a matter transporter in the shape of a crash helmet, before sitting down to learn about Dafydd's life from his aunt in her kitchen in north Wales.
The film follows Rhys through South America performing solo concerts, tracing the Welsh community's movements, and searching for Jones's great grandson, a 1970s Argentine pop star called René Griffiths, who would arrive on stage on a horse and sing in Welsh.
"It was an idea that got completely out of hand," says Rhys of the genesis of Separado!, which came five years ago when Super Furry Animals were given £15,000 by Rob Stringer, chairman of their former label Sony, to make a film. "When I was a kid, I used to watch this guy on television wearing a cape, riding a horse, and singing Welsh in a strange accent. I asked my grandmother who he was and she said, 'That's your uncle.' It was René Griffiths. Because of personal hardships and a horse race that went wrong, our family was divided – with René Griffiths growing up in Patagonia and my side of the family staying in Wales. I wanted to find out more."
In the mid-18th century, there was a rise in Welsh nationalism, a response to English landowners who attempted to force Anglicanism on the people and replace the Welsh language with English. The nationalist leader Michael D Jones decreed that the creation of a utopian Welsh state in Patagonia was the answer. What Jones didn't tell those who followed is that Patagonia was a barren desert. But remarkably, the community thrived.
"They were promised the earth," says Rhys, who speaks with extended pauses between sentences, in a way that has caused interviewers to suggest he is stoned (he isn't). "But really, they ended up in Patagonia because it was the only place that would have them, and they were escaping poverty in Wales. They survived by being resilient, inventing new methods of irrigation and sticking it out in the desert, even when they were offered better land elsewhere."
This is only the backdrop to the personal journey at the heart of Separado!, which balances its weightier moments with a lurid visual style and a childlike playfulness. A dance sequence on a Welsh beach represents Michael D Jones's promise of a utopia; while a colour-saturated shot of Rhys jumping over a fence to escape an angry armadillo follows a recap of the excesses of the 1976 Argentinean coup d'etat. At one point, he performs for the elderly locals of Gaiman, Patagonia's most Welsh village, at their community hall. In this kitsch world of teahouses, chapels and daffodils in the middle of the desert, Rhys's experimental set is met with some understandable confusion.
"It's remarkable that I can play a gig of Welsh language songs in South America and they understand what I'm singing about, even if they find the music a bit suspect," says Rhys, failing to mention that he performed much of it in a red spaceman's helmet while singing into an orange plastic cup. "There are Welsh road signs in Gaiman. Even an Italian restaurant will have a Welsh menu. It's fantastical, but the fact that I was there at all felt fantastical – the film needed to reflect that separation from reality."
At the heart of Separado! is Rhys's search for his long-lost relative. Rhys, the film's producer Catryn Ramasut and its co-director Dylan Goch arrived in Argentina, bought a van that was cheap (but had no seatbelts or a functioning gearbox), and took off without really knowing what they were doing. Various disasters befell the crew – they narrowly missed a volcanic eruption in the Andes, their camera was attacked and rendered useless by an irate penguin in the Peninsula Valdez – and Griffiths proved tantalisingly elusive, until the end.
"At worst, it's a Borat-style search for someone," says Rhys. "At best, it's a musical road trip couched in a magical realist style. But it's also a product of wanting to find out more about René, who is not only a fantastic guitarist and my distant relative, but also the only man I have ever heard of who arrives on stage on horseback. I only wish I could do that myself."