San Francisco Latino Film Festival
September 14 – 30, 2018
Cine+Mas SF is proud to announce the 10th anniversary of the San Francisco Latino Film Festival, opening September 14th through the 30th at various locations throughout SF and the Bay Area.
The CMSFLFF program includes award winning and critically acclaimed documentary, feature and short films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Peru, Spain, Uruguay and the USA. Local and visiting filmmakers from around the country and Latin America will be in attendance.
The festival will open again at the Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco’s Mission District. Additional venues include the Roxie Theater (SF); Roxie Cinema (SF); Brava Cabaret (SF); Eastside Cultural Center (Oakland), Centro Cultural (Berkeley). Additional venues/dates to be announced.
CMSFLFF opens this edition of the festival with Ruben Blades Is Not My Name, Bay Area premiere, directed by Abner Benaim. Latin American icon Ruben Blades was at the center of the New York Salsa revolution in the 1970’s. His socially charged lyrics and explosive rhythms brought Salsa music to an international audience. Blades has won 17 Grammys, acted in Hollywood, earned a law degree from Harvard and even ran for President of his native Panama. He lives in New York, where he shares his life at home and on tour with the camera. Critically acclaimed director Abner Benaim takes us on a journey through Ruben’s 50 year career, revealing that Ruben might still have both musical and political ambitions. The film is a celebration of this living legend and his struggle to come to terms with his legacy.
This year’s festival features twenty-five feature length fiction films, and nearly films in total. A sample of feature films includes: Sniffing Mom (Cuba), dir. Day Garcia. In Habana, Cuba, Lucas has a psychedelic trip back into the 80’s after digesting the ashes of his mother. Lucas como Sara (Sniffing Mom) is Garcia’s debut feature film. Day Garcia is the 5th female in Cuban history to ever have made a feature film; music documentary, Indestructible: The Soul of Salsa (Spain) dir. David Pareja. Seen through the eyes of el Cigala, this beautifully bewitching musical odyssey takes us from Madrid to various places all over the Americas in search of the sundry sources of that divine tradition we call salsa. A homage to the history of the musical culture and to his wife, Amparo, (who died of breast cancer in August 2015). It was Amparo, the dancer’s wife, who flooded him with enthusiasm to embark on this new adventure. Amparo is more present than ever in the Cuban rhythms and in the hearts of who have believed, like Diego, that salsa is a “gift for everyone, not just for Latinos “.
A local shorts program this year, Have You Seen Her, la Misión? Is a program dedicated by its co-curators, Sergio de la Mora and Vero Majano, in loving memory of Nora Cadena (1962-2018). This 20th year anniversary retrospective showcases the varied responses to the transformations experienced in the Mission District during the late 1990s dot.com boom. All the filmmakers– most Mission born and/or residents, several making their first film–represent locations and people in remarkably personal voices and dynamic film styles.
Films of Resistance play prominently in the festival, notably, 1950: The Nationalist Uprising, dir. José Manuel Dávila Marichal. Five Puerto Ricans who participated in the Nationalist Uprising of 1950 to free Puerto Rico from the United States of America, speaks about the history of this forgotten struggle and the consequences in their lives. The festival includes a full array of shorts with several local filmmakers including Encuentros (USA/San Francisco) dir. Naomi Garcia Pasmanick. Created by San Francisco natives in the watery edges of a city that is rapidly changing, this film intends to capture an intimate moment—the brief yet profound spiritual connection between two strangers– as well as this unique moment in an industrial San Francisco setting that is rapidly being developed. Just like the ever-changing water’s edge, Encuentros asks us to appreciate the beauty of an instant as well as the necessity of letting it go.
An unbelievable, Borat-style mockumentary, has some fun with America’s cannabis industry, lobbyists, and government officials in Get the Weed (Uruguay) by directors. Denny Brechner, Alfonso Guerrero. Their first feature film — a fake “Uruguayan Chamber of Legal Marijuana” travels to the United States to find 50 tons of cannabis to supply the country. President Jose Mujica is the leader of the mission. Hilarious while also subversively poignant mockumentary Get the Weed comes from Uruguay, the South American country that actually legalized weed years ago (true story) but then didn’t have enough of it to give out (also true story). So their farmer rebel-turned-president (who willingly stars in this film, true story) enlists two of his comrades to go get some from the United States (not true story).
The CMSFLFF will close on September 30th at the Roxie Theater with Sniffing Mom /Lucas Como Sara (Cuba), a raucous comedy by first-time filmmaker Day Garcia. Travel across Cuba and back in time to 80s Cuba. Garcia has a lot of fun with this cast and the script which will surely be a crowd-pleaser.
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RUBEN BLADES IS NOT MY NAME – Opening Night Film, September 14 , 7:30pm
Alamo Drafthouse, 2550 Mission Street, San Francisco
SCREENINGS
14-20 Sept Alamo Drafthouse- San Francisco
14-20 Sept Roxie Theater-San Francisco
16 Sept Alley Cat Bookstore
16-18 Sept Artists Television Access (ATA)-San Francisco
22-23 Sept Brava Theater-San Francisco
28-30 East Side Cultural Center-Oakland
Additional Venues to be added.
29-30 Roxie Theater-San Francisco
30 Sept BrasArte-Berkeley
EVENTS & AFTER PARTIES
6 Sept 5:30pm Kick-Off Latino Heritage Month, CMSF Latino Film Fest Reception -KPIX
14 Sept 7:30pm Opening Night Film -Alamo Drafthouse- San Francisco
14 Sept 9pm Opening Night Party – Good Times with DJ’s Wonway Posibul, Dion Decibels and special guest DJ Franchise, Asiento, 2730 21st St, SF
30 Sept 4pm Closing Film & Reception – San Francisco
INFO:
TICKETS: http://bit.ly/SFLFF10Tix