It isn’t easy for most cinema lovers to go to big-name film festivals, like the ones in Telluride and Venice, but Bay Area residents will get a chance to watch up to twenty exciting and socially relevant films from an array of filmmakers at the 2011 San Francisco Latino Film Festival, which starts next week.
Following on the heels of National Hispanic Heritage Month (which begins Sept. 14), this year’s third annual festival, presented by Cine+Mas, will kick off on Thursday, Sept. 16 and continues through Sept. 25. “Being: Café Tacuba,” a documentary about the popular Mexican rockeros, is the first film of the festival.
“We ended up with a great mix of local, international and U.S. talent in the mix,” Lucho Ramirez, executive director and one of the festival’s founders, said. “We did notice that we have a few different types of comedies that came in and that quite a few of the films have first-time filmmakers making their debut as feature film makers and quite a few of them are women.”
One of those women is Fina Torres, the Venezuelan director of the romantic comedy “Habana Eva,” about a young Cuban seamstress caught up in a love triangle in modern-day Cuba, where the uncertainty of Cuba’s future looms over the entire plot.
Another featured highlight is “Hell,” a darkly comic, subversive take on how the narcotics trade has infected Mexican society. The storyline revolves around a naive Mexican laborer who, having been deported from the U.S. after many years, returns to his hometown only to discover that everyone—including kindly old grandmothers—are shamelessly involved in the narco trade.
The film, directed by Luis Estrada, was purposefully released during Mexico’s 90th anniversary of independence and was a critical and commercial success.
“F*** My Life,” a Chilean film from director Nicolas Lopez, is another romantic comedy being screened at the festival. It highlights the difficulty of breaking up and disconnecting from relationships in the age of text messages, Facebook and other social media.
“It’s a cool film thematically, but also the film submission came though Twitter, so it’s like life imitating art, imitating life again.” Ramirez said.
Documentary highlights include “The Open Sky,” which covers the life of Archbishop Romero in El Salvador; “Blattangelus,” about a gay man who started a church for homosexuals in deeply Catholic Mexico; and “La Isla – Archives of Tragedy” about the forensic archivists who documented the genocides in Guatemala.
Local filmmaking talent will also be represented by “MLK Jr. Way,” an unconventional and unscripted narrative feature, directed by Eliseo Cabrera, Kara Cohen and Erik Stinson, about group of young Latino slackers living a bohemian lifestyle in Oakland.
Of course, there is much more, and Ramirez wants to get the word out that there are many options this year for viewers to select from.
“There’s a lot of talent there. It’s important to impart to our community that there’s different points of view and, that’s part of what going to the Latino film festival is all about,” Ramirez said. “It’s an asset to the community just as going to a gallery or a museum or some other cultural event, but you know it’s an appreciation of film as an art form—a little beyond just escapism.”
For more information regarding schedules and ticket, visit the SF Latino Film Festival website at http://www.sflatinofilmfestival.com.