Dear Friends,

Welcome to the Second Annual Filadelfia Latin American Film Festival, the first and only Annual Film Festival in the region to focus exclusively on the exhibition of Latin American and Latino film and media artists. This year, we are very excited to present a range of premieres, hard-hitting documentaries, shorts and digital media, from diverse cultures and geography, providing an array of perspectives from and about Latin America and the U.S.

This year we welcome a number of filmmakers, actors and producers to our region to discuss their work with diverse audiences and local filmmakers. We are proud to bring you a festival with a strong focus on films by and about Latinas and Latin American women, with premieres of Gloria Moran’s The Unique Ladies, Sonia Fritz’s América, and Andres Wood’s Violeta Se Fue a los Cielos.

The Festival kicks off with the short film Paal followed by Gloria Moran’s The Unique Ladies, a film production funded in part by a very popular kick starter campaign initiative. The Unique Ladies is about San Diego’s only all women’s low rider car club. The film portrays the strength and resolve of a group of women who go out to challenge the male-dominated world of low rider culture with their sheer talent, devotion and love for the work they do. The cars are something else, and their story is inspiring. We are very excited to be one of the first festivals to screen The Unique Ladies. Gloria Moran will be in Philadelphia for all screenings. On Saturday, Gloria will be teaching a masters class at Scribe Video Center. This class is a unique opportunity for filmmakers and audiences to engage with the filmmaker and get an insider’s look at her craft and process.

Andres Wood’s Violeta Se Fue a los Cielos is a gorgeously shot film on the life of the late Latin American singer and icon of Nueva Canción, Violeta Parra. The film sets out to tell the complicated life of a unique artist and the complex contradictions between her personal life as a woman, a mother, a wife and her art.

The film, based loosely on her son's memoir, does not purport to close the unfinished spaces of Violeta's narrative for the viewer. Instead, Wood honors our perspective as an audience by allowing us to access her full complexities and contradic­tions, refusing to give us the easy answers for closure sometimes expected in film, leaving open the narrative of the unfinished spaces we inhabit.

One of Toronto's International Film Festival's favorite films, 7 Boxes, offers us a very different film, a fast paced action thriller from Paraguay. Directed by Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schémbori and winner of the Euskaltel 2012 Award in San Sebastian Spain, 7 Boxes tells the story of Victor, a wheelbarrow goods transporter receiving an unusual proposal to carry seven boxes of unknown contents through the dangerous and infamous Parguayan street Market known as “Number 4”. Soon, things get complicated for Victor as the contents of the box seem to be highly coveted and people will stop at nothing to get their hands on them. Compared to such films as The Fast and The Furious, Reservoir Dogs, Slumdog Millionaire and El Mariachi, 7 Boxes holds its own with fast paced dialogue, action, and exciting deft precision camera work that takes you inside the film, and along the way, you become (willingly or unwillingly) Victor's passenger and witness. You are in for a ride.

We are also thrilled to offer Lemon, the highly acclaimed 2011 Doc NYC Special Jury Prize Winner by Beth Levison and Laura Brownson, which tells the inspiring story of three-time felon and one-time Tony Award win­ner, spoken word artist Lemon Andersen. The film chronicles Lemon's struggles to meet life's challenges. It is a story about not giving up, chasing your dreams and the reinvention of self. Lemon Andersen and Beth Levison will be available to discuss the film and Lemon's current project.

The shorts included in the Festival give us an opportunity to turn our gaze to more intimate worlds. In Paal, we are introduced to a Mayan boy who longs to teach us about the universe he was born in. Mi Primer Amor shows us a young boy trying to figure out women and their universe through his infatuation with his live-in female cousin.

Because our Festival is deeply rooted in the tradition of film and media as art forms and a meaningful agent for social change, this year we partnered with the Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) to present two premieres, produced by Danny Glover’s Louverture Films. Just completed, and screened at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, these two shorts offer an opportunity to examine the exploitation of labor in the food service industry in this country and in Philadelphia, specifically.

The Festival closes with the Philadelphia premiere of Sonia Fritz’s América. Produced and shot in Puerto Rico and New York City, América tells the story of a young woman living in Vieques, Puerto Rico during the island’s confrontation with the U.S. Navy. Abused by her husband and wanting to protect her daughter, she decides to change her life by moving to New York City. América offers the opportunity to showcase a complex film about family, friendship, migration, intimate partner violence, sacrifice, and the complex realities of the Puerto Rican migratory experiences, contrasted against the migratory experience of other Latin American immigrant women. Director Sonia Fritz, visiting our Festival from Puerto Rico, will present her work.

We would not be here today without our supporters, including our most dedicated, our donors and audiences. We would like to thank our sponsors, the Greater Philadelphia Film Office, the Philadelphia Foundation, the University of the Arts, International House, The Leeway Foundation, Casa de Duende, and Bread and Roses. We are honored to work with both International House and the University of the Arts and want to thank their staff for their support of our work. We would also like to extend a special thanks to our Board of Directors and Advisory Committee members for their hard work over the past year to make this Festival a reality.

We hope you enjoy the programming, and that you will come back for more!

When the lights dim, and the film rolls, we too are you. Welcome.

Sincerely,

Beatriz Vieira & David Acosta,
Co-Founders / Directors