Chicago Latino Film Festival features Rita Moreno doc, a coming-of-age tale and more
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Following last year’s virtual festival due to the pandemic, the 37th annual Chicago Latino Film Festival will open April 8 with a drive-in screening at ChiTown Movies, kicking off a lineup that will combine online and outdoor showings.
This year’s festival will present 45 feature films and 36 short films from all over Latin America, Spain, Portugal and the United States, running through April 18. Online offerings will be geo-blocked to residents of Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Drive-in screenings include Lissette Feliciano’s “Women Is Losers” on April 8, followed by Mariém Pérez Riera’s documentary “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It” on April 12 and Marcos Carnevale’s “El Cuartito” on April 17.
Sophie Gordon, the festival’s programmer, said the re-emergence of the drive-in during the pandemic was implemented in their planning for this year’s hybrid model.
“When we were putting this festival together,” she said, “we tried to delay our decision about going back to the theaters as long as we could, because we wanted to have some sort of in-person component. But thinking about the drive-in as a way to engage our community — to be physically in the same place as our audience and share that experience together safely — was really exciting to us.”
Pepe Vargas, festival director and executive director of the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago, said the film festival’s mission is about showcasing the diversity of experiences of Latinos to challenge preconceived stereotypes.
“The film festival serves as a weapon, if you will, to fight back against societal evils,” Vargas said. “We’re not using violence, we’re using our creativity to persuade people to think otherwise about who we are …. And that is the power of film: to transform, to change. Particularly, for me, I think I’m blessed with the opportunity to use our power to keep pushing the agenda for the betterment of Latinos and society as well.”
This year’s lineup is no exception. A number of films celebrate queer joy and hope, rather than focus on the struggles of queer and trans communities. More than 40% of the films in this year’s festival were made by women.
Vargas and Gordon said they received nearly 1,000 submissions to this year’s festival, double the volume than normal. This came as a surprise to them given the pandemic.
Here’s more about the films that will be featured in person at ChiTown Movies.
“Women Is Losers,” directed by Lissette Feliciano
Lissette Feliciano’s debut feature film, “Women Is Losers” will begin the Chicago Latino Film Festival. Feliciano, the first U.S.-born Latina to open the festival, and producer David Ortiz will attend the screening at ChiTown Movies. The film is set in 1960s San Francisco and follows Celina Guerrera, a young Catholic school girl who aspires to rise above poverty and invest in a new future for herself. “Women Is Losers” is loosely based on Feliciano’s mother and inspired by the Janis Joplin song of the same name.
Gordon said the film breaks the fourth wall from the very beginning and was a “no brainer” to open this year’s film festival.
“Even though it’s about the ’60s and early 1970s, this is a film that is so relevant today,” said Gordon. “It not only touches on issues within the Latinx community, but also on discrimination against Asian Americans and Black Americans. And it’s just a really wonderful film that tackles all these issues with grace and also with humor and a kind of levity that reminds us that the fight is still going.”
Feliciano hopes audiences see parts of themselves in these characters and feel inspired by their journeys.
“It’s a story about having agency over your destiny. And that is a very human, very universal desire,” she said via Zoom. “Everybody wants freedom over choices, over their bodies, over their ability to make money, their ability to prosper .... We all want it; we are all striving towards it. I hope this film helps you feel inspired that you can reach it.”
“Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It,” directed by Mariém Pérez Riera
The centerpiece presentation for this year’s festival is Mariém Pérez Riera’s documentary “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.”
In 1962, Moreno was the first Latina to win an Academy Award for her role as Anita in “West Side Story.” Since then, her career has spanned almost 80 years and is one of the few artists who has won an Emmy, Grammy and Tony award alongside her Oscar.
“Rita Moreno is going to be 90 soon, but she has been since she was a teenager fighting against everything that came her way to succeed,” Vargas said. “To us, it’s very important, because that is one of the things that, in general, our community lacks is role models.”
To Riera, a Puerto Rican filmmaker, Moreno is an icon and an inspiration. Before making the documentary, Riera had seen Moreno behind the scenes on the television show, “One Day at a Time,” which starred Moreno, Justina Machado and Riera’s son, Marcel Ruiz.
“A year before this even happened, (I was) thinking, wow, if I ever made a documentary on Rita, I want to show this, I want to show that, because I was able to see her on the set,” Riera said in a phone interview. “I was able to see her without makeup or driving to set .... Every time Rita is in front of a camera, she’s performing, so I really wanted to show that other side.”
While following and filming Moreno around for a year for the documentary, Riera shared that the entire crew was all Latino, mostly from Puerto Rico — something that was special not only for her, but for Moreno too.
“El Cuartito,” directed by Marcos Carnevale
Argentine director Marcos Carnevale’s film “El Cuartito” will close this year’s Chicago Latino Film Festival. The immigration dramedy follows five strangers from across Latin America who get detained at Puerto Rico’s international airport along with a couple of Muslim migrants in a security screening room they call “El cuartito.”
Carnevale said, translated by one of the film’s executive producers, Fernando Sumas Diaz, that “El Cuartito” is about the prejudice people face when entering the United States due to ramped up immigration policies enacted during the Trump administration.
“Just for being Latin, you are a suspect,” Carnevale said via Zoom. “The (immigration) policy in general is not necessarily only from Trump’s administration; the U.S. has had for a long time strong border controls .... The Trump administration proudly increased some of the policies, and this is just me adding (to the conversation). But (immigration) is not here and now today; this is a subject that has been there forever — and also, is not necessarily only in the United States.”
Tickets for all drive-in screenings are $55 per car for the general public and $44 per car for ILCC members. No more than 6 people per car; tickets must be purchased in advance.
Tickets for the virtual screenings are $12 for general public and $10 for ILCC members, students and seniors. There are also festival passes available for 10 films: $100 or $80 for ILCC members, students and seniors.
To view the festival lineup and purchase tickets, visit www.chicagolatinofilmfestival.org/
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