Women Emerging as the Stars of Latino International Film Fest

The title of the movie scheduled to open this year’s Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, “Woman on Top,” is a fitting description for the prominence of women filmmakers represented in the fourth annual event.

The festival, beginning Friday and continuing through July 30 at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, will feature a special program, “Women’s Visions,” highlighting the work of several contemporary Latin American and American female directors. Their work is among the more than 70 feature films, documentaries and shorts from the U.S., Latin America and Spain.

But without a doubt, the biggest name at the festival--female or male--will be the 86-year-old legendary Mexican actress Maria Felix, who is scheduled to receive a lifetime achievement award on July 29.

Known as La Dona and “the devourer of men,” Felix shunned Hollywood and became a cultural icon in her home country and Latin America. As Mexico’s leading actress (along with Dolores del Rio) during that country’s golden age of film from the 1940s through the early 1960s, Felix came to define the star system in Mexico.

A woman of astonishing beauty, Felix had countless lovers and four husbands. The festival will feature some of her most memorable films, including “Enamorada,” “Dona Barbara” “Maclovia” and “Rio Escondido.” It will be the first time in many years that these movies have been seen by American audiences, according to festival co-founder Marlene Dermer.

“She is the diva of our history of cinema,” said Dermer. “We are trying to acknowledge women in film, and so it’s appropriate that this award go to the greatest diva of them all.”

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The festival will open with the U.S. premiere of Fox Searchlight’s “Woman on Top,” featuring Spanish actress Penelope Cruz (“All About My Mother”) in one of her first English-language starring roles. The film, directed by Venezuelan Fina Torres and written by Brazilian Vera Blasi, is a romantic comedy with Cruz as a gifted chef who leaves her philandering husband in Brazil and starts a new life in San Francisco. It was originally scheduled for release this month, but Fox executives have pushed it back to Sept. 22.

Dermer said she was surprised by the large number of films she saw this last year directed by women or starring women as the main characters.

“In my travels, I kept finding work by women that was interesting, artistic, socially conscious and fun,” said Dermer.

The increasing number of women directors in Latin America is a relatively recent phenomenon. Although men still dominate the film industry, more and more women are placing themselves at the helm of filmmaking.

“In Venezuela there are a lot of women directors,” said Torres. “There were so few of us when I started working. I don’t know exactly why, but there has been a change and progression for women. It’s like the market is really opening up and women are showing they can make successful films.”

The festival’s “Women’s Visions” category features “Huelepega,” directed by Elia Schneider of Venezuela; the Venezuelan/Peruvian entry, “A La Media Noche y Media” (Half-Past Midnight) directed by Mariana Rondon and Marite Ugas; and Mexican director Maria del Carmen Lara’s first feature “En el Pais de no Pasa Nada” (In the Country Where Nothing Happens).

Four female directors from the U.S. will show their documentaries: Marcy Garriot’s “Split Decision,” about a young boxer who is deported to Mexico for a crime committed in his youth; Hannah Weyer’s “La Boda,” about an immigrant family’s experiences in the U.S.; and two short films--Amparo Garcia’s “Loaves and Fishes” and Marise Samitier’s “Return of Reason.”

“What I like about this program is that all the women do something very different in their films,” said Dermer. “We are trying to show how broad women’s visions are in cinema.”

In addition to the “Women’s Visions” category, four popular Spanish films to be screened at the festival feature women as the leads. Rather than focus on the women only as bombshells or sex symbols, these movies show them in complex, intense, dramatic roles.

The four films include “Solas,” starring Ana Fernandez and Maria Galiana, which will have a U.S. release in the fall by Samuel Goldwyn Films; “La Nina de Tus Ojos,” (The Girl of Your Dreams), a tragi-comedy set during World War II, starring Cruz; Spanish actress Emma Suarez stars in “Sobrevivire,” (I Will Survive); and “Flores de Otro Mundo” (Flowers of Another World) starring Lissete Mejia.

Aside from the focus on women, the festival will showcase two much-discussed Mexican films that have not received distribution here: “La Ley de Herodes” (Herod’s Law) and “Todo el Poder” (All the Power).

“Herodes,” which will close the festival, made international headlines last year when Mexican government officials attempted to ban its release until after the July presidential elections. The film, which was released in Mexico in February, is a black comedy that lampoons the corruption of what was once Mexico’s leading party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. “Herodes” shared this year’s Sundance Film Festival Latin American prize with Arturo Ripstein’s “No One Writes to the Colonel.”

“People in Los Angeles have such a strong Mexican influence in their daily lives,” said Luis Estrada, the film’s director. “I think the film will be understood pretty well there. It’s very hard to define borders nowadays.”

“Todo el Poder,” also caused some waves back home for its cynical take on Mexico City’s corrupt police force and politicians.

Several other films take on the violent street crime plaguing many Latin American nations. “Ratas, Ratones y Rateros,” (Rodents) focuses on a pair of Ecuadoran street urchins who lurk through the streets of Quito looking for trouble.

And in a return of a classic theme, Carlos Diegues’ “Orfeu,” a new take on Marcel Camus’ 1959 “Black Orpheus,” will be screened. Diegues is the director of “Bye, Bye Brazil,” which won best foreign film in 1979. “Orfeu,” which features a soundtrack by Caetano Veloso, will be distributed in the U.S. in September by New Yorker Films.

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Latino films from the U.S. will also debut at the festival, including “King of the Jungle,” in which John Leguizamo plays a mentally disabled young man surviving on the mean streets of New York.

In addition to movies, the festival will host three seminars. On Saturday, members of the Directors Guild will discuss the director-actor relationship. On Sunday, members of the Writers Guild will talk about the role of minority writers in Hollywood. On July 29 there will also be a UCLA film workshop for children. All seminars are open to the public. The festival will also broadcast the opening gala, the Felix tribute and the closing gala in a live Web cast (https://www.latinofilm.org).

This will be the first time since its founding that the festival is held in the summer rather than October.

Co-founders Dermer, Edward James Olmos and George Hernandez decided to have the festival early in hopes of catching a summer crowd. Also, during the fall they would be competing for movies with other notable festivals such as Toronto, Telluride, Colo., and San Sebastian, Spain.

“We are here to celebrate the richness and diversity of Latinos, but we are not a festival only for Latinos,” said Dermer. “In the summer, more kids are out and that is the seed for the future [of the festival].”

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For information on the film schedule, visit the festival’s Web site or call (323) 692-3563; for tickets call (323) 461-2020.