Looks can be deceiving. When those graphically pleasing postcards announcing the next Cine las Americas Film Festival arrive, it's easy to assume they are the product of a large, behind-the-scenes art department churning out work on demand. You'd be right about the work, at least. At this time of year, a handful of days before the launch of the festival (in its 11th year), Executive Director Eugenio del Bosque and his core five-person staff expand to include festival staff, interns, and volunteers working around the clock, attending to the hundreds of details that must be dealt with to execute the festival.
"Our posters and artwork are a mixed blessing," says Jacqueline Rush Rivera, now in her second year as Cine las Americas' director of programming. "When people look at our posters and our website, they assume we have a lot more money than we do. That's why I encourage them to come by our office. I think that puts it all in perspective."
Cine las Americas' Eastside offices are modest when compared to the strides the organization has made in its short existence. That they've managed to pull off an international film festival – originally four days, now nine days long – in addition to year-round programming, with a bare-bones staff, is no small feat. Still, Cine las Americas has stayed true to its mission by growing "brick by brick," as del Bosque is known to say, even if that means going against conventional wisdom. If that means opening the festival with a documentary, as in this year's Septiembres (see previews), they'll do it. They're "cool with playing stuff the critics aren't down with," Rush Rivera says, or with showcasing a body of work that is largely unheralded in the U.S., as in the retrospective of Brazilian filmmaker Nelson Pereira dos Santos (see "Papa Brasilia"). It means more work, but it's worth it when you share the passion of the filmmakers you celebrate: socially engaged artists dedicated to the art of film, who are willing to challenge – out of circumstance or imaginative audacity – the idea of what is necessary to make good cinema. So it's only natural that dos Santos, who made his career bringing unseen voices and images to film, appears in this year's festival, as well as three films from an upstart Mexican production company. They, like Cine las Americas, all have one thing in common: They may have started small, but that didn't stop them from thinking big. Not Hollywood blockbuster big. Big in ideas, artistry, approach, a sense of responsibility, and, inevitably, heart.
Of the 83 films in this year's festival, three are from the "upstart shingle" Canana Films. Started in 2006 by actors Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, and producer Pablo Cruz, Canana has been credited with creating another renaissance in Mexican cinema, one that works outside the narrow circle of filmmakers in an already-insular industry. Canana's mission is to produce films that would not be supported by major studios, as in Cochochi. Co-directed by Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas, Cochochi is their first feature, and it closes out this year's festival on Thursday, April 24, 7pm, at the Alamo South Lamar.
Set in the luscious Sierra Tarahumara, Cochochi was created with and performed by local, nonprofessional actors, speaking in their native Rarámuri (with English subtitles). Sent on an errand by their grandfather, two brothers find themselves in that universal childhood quandary in which one poor choice seems to beget a litany of larger woes. Cochochi is a road-trip story told in a rarely heard voice in Mexico.
"A film like ours would have been very difficult to shoot without Canana," the filmmakers said via e-mail. They are currently traveling with their film as it tours the festival circuit, where it has been garnering high praise, including the Diesel Discovery Award at 2007's Toronto International Film Festival. "Canana is worried, like us, to do films that not only occur in Mexico City but to show other faces of Mexico. Probably if Canana was not involved, not even Mexicans would see the forgotten places of Mexico," the filmmakers said.
"There's a really encouraging trend at the moment, with low-cost, socially minded films being funded independently. To me, Cochochi is a good example of that," Rush Rivera says. "Cine las Americas really admires [Canana's] production and distribution model." It's a model built on persistence and ignoring how things "should" be done.
An example of Canana's drive is evident in the creation of Ambulante, Canana's nonprofit arm which is dedicated to promoting docs. The traveling festival was launched as a "rock tour, but for documentaries," García Bernal explained in a 2006 interview in The Guardian. In organizing the tour, García Bernal, Luna, and Cruz found support in the Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia and Cinépolis, the largest cinema chain in Mexico, which offered weeklong screenings in cities where documentaries had never shown before.
Other Canana films showing at Cine las Americas include directorial debuts from both García Bernal and Luna. García Bernal's Déficit (which screens on both Friday, April 18, and Monday, April 21) is a deceptively simple film about a bunch of overindulged young adults partying at their parent's country home. Beneath the mindless debauchery is a look at how class reveals itself in subtle and not so subtle ways. Luna's JC Chávez (which screens Thursday, April 17, and Sunday, April 20) profiles the Mexican boxing legend as a sports figure whose rise coincides with a particular moment in Mexican political history.
"Our audiences expect a challenge," Rush Rivera says. Like Canana and other upstarts who work against the grain, Cine las Americas has cultivated an audience for the work they want to showcase – vital work that is not experienced elsewhere. While organizing any film festival is never easy, one thing is clear when it comes to Cine las Americas and its like-minded colleagues: It's all necessary work.
The Cine las Americas Film Festival begins April 16 at the Paramount Theater and continues at various venues through April 24. For a full schedule and ticket information, see www.cinelasamericas.org.
