Dan's Papers - October 5, 2007 - review: Long Island Latino International Film Festival

With films from New York to Brazil, ranging from major issues such as illegal immigration to baseball, the Long Island Latino International Film Festival took place at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center without a hitch. The program director, Magdalena Allizu, along with president Janet Cruz and founder TJ Collins put on quite an event for Westhampton. The caliber of these movies, the majority of them in Spanish with subtitles, was impressive.

All of the films in the festival were professionally done, and most of them had a serious tone to them, covering major issues like illegal immigration, homophobia, divorce and 9/11. These films made for some very interesting discussions at the end of each showing.

Some of the films during the festival were made by NYU students who had immigrated from overseas to realize their filmmaking dream and henceforth, the American Dream, while others were born and raised here but wanted to celebrate their heritage. This year, there were more submissions to the festival than any other year, which made it hard for the leaders of the festival to choose a film, but at the same time was a very good sign that the festival was growing. A major sponsor to the event was IO en Espanol, a Latin part of Cablevision.

The Long Island Latino International Film Festival was started to celebrate Hispanic culture and act as a stage to present some of the newest and hottest Latin filmmakers of today. That is exactly what they have done. All weekend long, which included a cocktail reception, film directors and actors came down to the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center to showcase their works. One of which was a feature length film about playing stickball in the inner cities of America and how it is now a New York institution that brings together different communities and has done so for a hundred years. It showed how Italian and Irish immigrants played the game, and how today Hispanics are as well, as the new immigrants of today and the old from the past become American sharing the game.

With a large staff of volunteers, the film festival ran smoothly, with powerful films such as Proof of Birth a story of a young illegal Mexican immigrant on a quest for a legal driver's license in New York City, or A Garota/The Kid which is a movie that, in a symbolic and delicate way, raises questions and brings up reflections about human misery and the inequality in rent distribution, child labor and child loss.

Although most movies reflected upon a serious issue facing Hispanic Americans, mainly illegal immigration, not everything in the film festival was so serious and not everything had the underlying tone of illegal immigration and other social issues.

There was the short, I Like You Too/Yo Tambien Te Quiero whose synopsis earns a laugh, "The worst thing a woman can tell a man is that she also likes him, but only as a friend."

The Latino Film Festival was not just for Spanish only speaking Hispanics. The majority of those that attended the film festival were Irish, Jewish, Italian and of course Latin American, all of whom were there as just Americans - there to enjoy and share just one thing - the movies.