HBO’S NY INT’L LATINO FEST DISPATCH
The 9th Annual New York International Latino Film Festival got underway this week in Midtown Manhattan with a screening of Neil Abrahamson’s American Son, perhaps one of the most critically lauded films from this year’s edition of Sundance that remains without an American distributor.
The festival is known for its wild parties, but I’ve yet to get to any – the trek from Bed-Stuy to Midtown has proved too much each night so far. Like most ethnic niche fests, the programming is mixed bag. With titles from top shelf fests that may or may not have already seen theaters (Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop, tonight at 9:30pm) and star studded headliners (John Leguizamo and Harvey Keitel in festival closer The Ministers for instance) stealing most of the thunder from the smaller pictures. Recurring motifs throughout the selection seem to be multi-strand LA tales (Ernst Gossner’s South of Pico, Celia Fox’s Lawrence Fishburne vehicle Days of Wrath) and musical biographies (Joe Cardona & Mario De Varona’s Celia The Queen, Vlad Yudin’s Big Pun: The Legacy).
The most effecting film of the festival I’ve seen so far is Nicholas Bruckman’s La Americana. The film, a graduate of the 2007 IFP Rough Cut Lab, is an unassuming look at the life of Carmen, a bolivian illegal immigrant, who has come to New York City to earn enough money to support her ailing daughter. Bruckman expertly weaves the contemporary immigration debate into the tale of this unforgettable woman, who must risk what little economic security she’s gained in the US to return and care for the sick girl.
The Hola Mexico Film Festival, a Mexican sidebar to NYLIFF that takes place at the Quad Cinemas, attempted to screen Carlos Reygadas’ universally hailed Silent Light, for the first time in the States since its American premiere at last fall”s New York Film Festival. However, a print from now defunct UK distributor Tartan never arrived, and the film was screened on DVD off of a laptop. It started skipping about fifty minutes into Reygadas’ latest masterwork. What I saw was quite incredible, although without seeing it in 35mm, I can’t tell if its the most beautiful film I’ve ever seen, or just in the top ten. Either way, I wish I could make the encore screening tomorrow at 1pm, but (full disclosure forthcoming), I produced a film which screens at the festival at the same time (the festival program inaccurately claims I directed it. The horror!). I’m officially bummed out, as Silent Light remains without American distribution. Anybody got a screener?
