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Weekend festival highlights the best in Latin filmmaking

Bill DeYoung

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"Retablo," Peru (2018), directed by Alvaro Delgado Aparicio.

Latin American art, and artistry, has been Linda Friedman Ramirez’s passion for her entire adult life – in fact, even as a kid growing up in Pennsylvania, she was fascinated. And it only grew from there.

Friedman, a St. Pete-based criminal defense attorney, has rarely if ever wavered from her desire to share the art she loves so much with others. For four years, starting in 2012, she operated the Feathered Serpent Gallery – specializing in Latin and Latin American works – in the Edge District. In 2015, she was invited to program films of Hispanic origin for the city’s Sunscreen Film Festival.

Last year, Ramirez launched the Tampa Bay Latin Film Festival. This weekend, her “labor of love” returns for its second go-round, with just under 20 films.

“My expectation,” Ramirez says, “was to do something very small, and I’m still not trying to compete with the Miami Film Festival. Or Sunscreen. The goal is to collaborate within the community – to contribute to the great arts community that we already have here.”

Tampa Bay, like so much of Florida, has a broad and diverse Latin population. That was one of the reasons Ramirez decided to strike out on her own. She knew there was an audience.

She can sense that the world itself, as it applies to films and filmmaking, is changing. In the last few years, Academy Awards have gone to gifted Latino directors Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

There’s even more, insists Ramirez. “I think the viewing public’s tastes have changed,” she says. “They’re really looking for just good, quality films – that could be a film from Mexico, a film from Peru, if it’s a good film, then people will follow, so to speak.”

“I give Netflix a lot of credit for this. At one time, only people who were interested in reading subtitles went to the international film categories. Then the bi-lingual series Narcos broke through – there were subtitles for English, subtitles for Spanish – and progressively there was just a lot more international content.

“On Netflix now, it’s mind-boggling how much international content there is. So I’d say the viewing public is a lot more accustomed to watching international film.”

The Tampa Bay Latin Film Festival begins, as all such events to, with a “Call For Films.” As the submissions roll in, they are screened by Ramirez and members of a volunteer committee. Some, of course, already have reputations, good press, good word-of-mouth. Some just arrive with no fanfare at all.

Still other films are recommended to the committee. “There are members of this community who follow Latin American film, and are constantly reading about new films, hearing about them, so that’s part of the process,” Ramirez says.

Screenings are at the AMC Sundial; there are several other events, including an opening reception and an awards ceremony; Ramirez recommends getting tickets online.

You can see the entire schedule here; check out these highlights:

Mauricio Ochmann

Telemundo heartthrob Mauricio Ochmann will attend the screening (Saturday at 2 p.m.) of Diaz, a film he directed about a young Mexican baseball player. Ochmann is a telenova actor who starred in the crime drama El Chema (all 84 episodes are currently available on Netflix). El Chema was a spinoff from the mega-popular El Señor de los Cielos. A Q&A with Ochmann will follow the screening.

From Peru, Retablo (screening 5 p.m. Saturday), directed by Alvaro Delgado Aparicio, is co-sponsored by the Tampa Bay International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Fourteen-year-old Segundo Paucar wants to become a master story-box maker, just like his father, to carry on with the family legacy. On his way to a community celebration in the Andes, Segundo accidentally observes his father in a situation that shatters his whole world.

Retablo, says Ramirez, was “discovered” by a member of the screening committee who just happened to read that it was an “amazing” film. “And part of it is the fact that it’s about the son of an artist, and certainly we’re part of this huge arts community,” she explains. “There was that added connection.”

Submitted for consideration, and gladly accepted, was the American-made The Last American Colony (dir. Bestor Cram and Mike Majoros). It’s a documentary about Puerto Rico and its struggles for independence from the United States, built around freedom fighter Juan Segarra and the Los Macheteros movement. Screens 12 p.m. Saturday.

Ruben Blades

Screening at 3 p.m. Sunday, Ruben Blades is Not My Name profiles the 17-time Grammy-wining salsa pioneer Ruben Blades, a Panamanian native who not only revolutionized Latin music, he acted in Hollywood, earned a law degree from Harvard and ran for president of his home country. The director is Abner Benaim.

Director Miguel Coyula will conduct a Q&A following the 5:30 p.m. Sunday screening of Nadie, his acclaimed documentary about Rafael Alcides, once a widely-known and celebrated writer of the Cuban revolution; Coyula “has created a pop-culture collage combining clips from old movies, photographs, and imaginary conversations, all held together by the magnetic personality of raconteur Alcides,” according to the festival website.

“I never really liked talking head documentaries, but with him (Alcides) I felt I needed to make an exception,” Coyula told an interview. “Because it’s not just his voice, it’s the way he speaks, the way he moves his arms, the way he conveys emotions when talking about an infinity of subject matters.

“He’s very unique in the sense that, having believed in the revolution and then grown disappointed, he’s not afraid to share that in front of a camera.”

Alcides died in Havana in June 2018, at the age of 85.

Coyula will be joined in the discussion by actress (and Nadie co-producer) Lynn Cruz.

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