by Ulises Silva
Thanks to our friends over at All Roads Film Project, Being Latino was able to attend this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It’s the start of what we hope will be a strong, mutually prosperous relationship, so please check out their Facebook page to learn more about
what they’re doing not just for Latinos but for other under-represented peoples!
So anyway, it’s Sundance, and it’s Park City, Utah, so you know what that means: movies and skiing! And while my basic survival instincts and current lack of healthcare insurance will make me forgo skiing, I am here to watch films relevant to all things Latino.
Today, we kicked things off in earnest by attending our first films. Ari Pineda of All Roads Film Project saw Gun Hill Road, starring Esai Morales and Judy Reyes, while I checked out the documentary Granito by Pamela Yates. I’ll be seeing Gun Hill Road later this week, but can tell you that Granito is a powerful film about the death squads in Guatemala during the early 1980s and of the ongoing attempts to bring dictator Efraín Ríos Montt to trial for genocide. (Watch for our upcoming film review of Granito!)
Speaking of Esai Morales, Being Latino’s Lance Ríos happens to know him, and so tried to arrange for us to meet with and interview him. After a long, arduous, and concentrated effort involving 144 back-and-forth e-mails, ambush phone calls, and a very distraught carrier pigeon, Lance was able to set us up for a meeting with Esai at today’s Q & A session. Unfortunately, yours truly almost botched the whole thing after failing to take into account the madness that is trying to rush from one theater to the next using the festival’s network of free shuttles. Yes, they’re free, but they’re also not the most punctual. And they don’t have the hover-technology necessary to, say, fly over congestion. While my shuttle was stuck in traffic, Ari called me to say that Esai was on the verge of leaving.
Catastrophe was averted thanks to Ari’s cajoling, stalling, and stalking skills. She managed to keep on him while I raced to their theater. I got there just as Ari and Esai were walking out. After a brief cab ride over to Sundance HQ, we were able to sit down and do a brief video interview with Esai.
Ulises Silva, Esai Morales, Ari Pineda
Esai had some wonderful things to say to us, his fans and fellow Latinos, about the things we can be doing to better ourselves not just as filmmakers but as people. He was articulate, eloquent, and downright funny. We discovered this over the course of a 90-minute lunch with him and his friend Bernice, where, among other things, we discovered he was a talented singer, a proud father of an adorable four-month-old daughter, and someone who should definitely be writing screenplays!
Unfortunately, doofus that I am, I forgot my camera’s USB cable, and so won’t be able to download the video interview until I go back home. But we’ll be posting this interview on Being Latino next week, so make sure to check it out!
We’re about to head out to watch a Mexican film called The Cinema Hold Up. Needless to say, by the time we get back, it’ll be well past all your bedtimes, so read up about it and tomorrow’s slate of films…tomorrow…or soon thereafter!
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To read more from Ulises,
visit his fiction blog at www.spacechurros.com.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be understood to be shared by Being Latino, Inc.
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