Letting Voices Be Heard
Cine Las Americas programming is all about access
By Jessi Cape, Fri., April 29, 2016
From intern to film program associate, Elena Bessire's 10-year tenure at Cine Las Americas has been a labor of love, of both film and community. With 11 different categories, the programming is no small feat, but she's particularly proud of the Official Selection Panorama and the festival's co-curating partnerships because of the doors that open for everyone involved. "We give an outlet to these filmmakers who, in many cases, might not get to screen at another fest. They've got a great film and a great story, and we want to support it."
Accessibility is a huge point of pride for the fest, which is why roughly one-third of the entire program is offered as free and open to the public at the Mexican American Cultural Center. The Panorama schedule includes five documentary features and 14 shorts, sourced from a cornucopia of Ibero-American cultures. "It's pretty cool to see each country's cinematic landscape expand and grow, and spread a little further across the world," she says.
A Mexican doc, Ayotzinapa: Chronicle of a State Crime, examines the infamous disappearance of 43 students in Mexico, with witness testimony and details surrounding the event. In the doc Indivisible, director Hilary Linder focuses on Dreamers activists: Three undocumented young adults remain stateside after their families' deportation and rise to immigration activism in Washington, D.C. Make No Noise: The Story of a Skatepark, follows a group of Minnesotan teens who fight city council and bureaucratic red tape to earn their coveted skatepark. Bessire says, "It's super uplifting and inspiring that teenagers can battle through something that a lot of us older people might give up on."
The Peruvian doc Daughter of the Lake tells of the fight against the gold mining industry, with a sharp eye on environmental devastation, communication with the natural and spiritual world, a desperately needed job market, and the effects on the indigenous Andean peoples. Several shorts offer lighter fare: "Oscar" is a Mexican animated art bio; "Your Fucking Bank" is a Spanish dramedy mixing soccer finals with a bank robbery; and an entry from Belize, "Manna," looks at solitude and mysterious island mail.
"We see these similar stories and topics that come up each year – lots of immigration and political and environmental issues throughout the Americas – but they come at it from different angles. They keep evolving, so there's definitely still a lot of education that can be done about these issues," says Bessire.
Expanding the coverage is why the CLA team works hard to co-present and co-curate with other organizations. For the first time, they're working with Houston's Senorita Cinema, which programs films directed by Latina women, to screen a retrospective roadshow of 10 shorts from the past five editions of their fest. "We're excited to bring that to Austin as a kind of outlet for filmmakers in our region to let them know that there's this option." They've also joined up with the Austin Music Video Festival to offer a bigger-than-ever Latino music video selection this year, and "grow that scene and get those artists and directors in here." Bessire adds, "We always want to provide something new for our audiences. We really like to expand people's minds."
