OKLAHOMA CITY — Friday and Saturday, Oklahoma City’s Calle dos Cinco district in historic Capitol Hill will transform into a cross-cultural cauldron of creative energies and storytelling as the 11th annual Cine Latino Film Festival brings together film works from all across the Latin, Hispanic, and Spanish-speaking worlds.
Launched in 2014 in the basement of Capitol Hill’s El Nacional newspaper building, the festival has grown into a two-day event taking over the beautifully renovated Yale Theatre and the Capitol Hill Library and bringing together not only Latino filmmakers from across our community, but from across the world.
“We had over one hundred submissions this year from America and all the way from Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Spain, and Brazil,” said filmmaker and Cine Latino co-founder/director Rogelio Almeida Jr. when I caught up with him this week by phone. “People even in other countries have really started to looking at our little festival as a great way to be seen in the states.”
No longer just a few-hour little basement event, Cine Latino has grown into an important part of the region’s – and the world’s – cinematic landscape, with Latin filmmakers far and wide recognizing the festival’s potential.
“We’ve started seeing submissions that ended up being the same films submitted for Oscars,” Almeida said. “A couple years ago, we received a submission from Panama that ended up being the same film the nation of Panama submitted for the Oscars. And then the same thing happened from Spain.”
Almeida believes that’s partially because so many filmmakers and creatives are recently starved for respectable, culturally diverse showcases like Cine Latino, but it’s also because of the work that he and the full team behind the fest have done to foster and raise the profile of future Latin filmmakers.
“Within the first two years of the festival, we started the Oklahoma Cine Latino Film Institute,” he said. “We get students from high school and middle school and a little older, from 14 to 20, and it’s an intensive crash course into filmmaking.”
The Cine Latino Film Institute works throughout each February, offering students opportunities to develop screenwriting skills, directorial and camera techniques, production know-how, and more, all under the tutelage of working filmmakers, often ones who have had work showcased in the festival.
“We try every year to make sure we have that cultural component,” Almeida said. “We invite a lot of Hispanic filmmakers to talk to these students so that they can be inspired by people where they can say ‘Oh, they look like me. They speak my language. They speak my culture.’”
That’s the same cross-cultural appeal that will be bringing out the crowds this weekend to see the festival’s two-day slate of films and events.
Friday will see Cine Latino at the Yale, where ticketholders will be treated to a full evening of 14 short films selected from across the full Latin diaspora, including this year’s Cine Latino Film Institute selection, “Beneath the Marigolds,” a story of siblings struggling to reconnect after their grandparents’ deaths.
Throughout the evening, the festival’s awards and accolades will also be announced and time will be given to the filmmakers in attendance for the festivities, some of whom will have traveled to see their films screened before an audience for the very first time.
“We actually have some world premieres this year, some films that have never been screened before,” Almeida said. “And we’ll be doing the awards announcements all throughout the night, so if there’s a winning film about to screen, and especially if the filmmaker is there, then we’ll make that announcement right then and there.”
Then on Saturday, the festival will be spreading out across Capitol Hill, taking over the Capitol Hill Library with two screening rooms all day – totally free and open to the public – and then presenting a full filmmakers panel and closing night films at Resonant Head for the first time ever.
“It’s actually the first time we’ve ever added a third venue,” Almeida said. “We’ve got filmmakers coming in from all over for the panel. We know we have at least seven confirmed for the panel, but it could be even more as more filmmakers come through and show up for the festival.”
Following the final screenings, Resonant Head is then shifting into party mode with a full dance party night of wild Latin pop.
For Almeida, it’s the culmination of another year of hard work all focused on showcasing the real power and passion of the community.
“Right now, the Latino community, the Hispanic community, they’re really getting to have their own voice,” he said. “In my wildest dreams, I never would’ve thought I’d see names like Diego Luna or Oscar Isaac in ‘Star Wars,’ you know? Or names like Salma Hayek becoming household names. So the Latino community is really showing its power, and I just think that festivals like ours are an important part of that.”
The 11th annual Cine Latino Film Festival takes place Friday, March 21st, and Saturday, March 22nd in OKC’s Historic Capitol Hill and Calle dos Cinco district.
Tickets for the Friday evening events at the Yale Theatre can be purchased at filmfreeway.com/OklahomaCineLatinoFilmFestival/tickets.
For more information, visit historiccapitolhill.com.
Catch Brett Fieldcamp’s film column weekly for information and insights into the world of film in the Oklahoma City metro and Oklahoma. | Brought to you by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
