The 37th annual CineFestival, the nation’s oldest and longest-running Latino film festival, has named Christine Dávila as the new curator. Dávila is no stranger to the festival hosted by the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. She has participated in CineFestival for the past three years, and she programmed a selection of shorts for last year’s event.
Dávila brings plenty of experience to the job. She is currently the director of Ambulante USA—the Kickstarted traveling documentary film festival that shows films in makeshift spaces—and has been a programming associate at the Sundance Film Festival since 2008. Dávila has also been the programmer of the Yellow Robin competition at the Curacao International Film Festival Rotterdam, and has other film programming experiences, including the San Francisco International Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival and LA’s Downtown Independent Theater.
“(I want) to work as closely as possible with the local organizations and staff to find out what kind of movies will play well and focus on a program to promote,” Dávila stated in a press release. “It’s great that this is my third year, I feel I know the place a bit better, but I’m looking forward to becoming more involved in order to enrich CineFestival on both a local and national level.”
Aspiring filmmakers still have a chance to enter their film for the 2015 CineFestival. To be considered, the movie must have been produced no earlier than 2013, have a Latino or Latina as producer, director, writer or lead role and/or have relevance to the Latino community. The final deadline for entries is Nov. 3. More information can be found on the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center website.
Even with a new curator, the 2015 festival will continue to showcase both local and global talent.
“(CineFestival is) homespun and no fancy frills attached. For me that means that unlike some other festivals you get to see an authentic audience only engaged in the purity of the film,” Dávila said. “I think this particular audience’s perspective is one that re-interprets the stories on film—their take on a film I see play in big cities like LA, San Francisco or Mexico City is always fascinating. Their unique vantage point makes it particularly exciting to program in this region.”
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