High Hopes For Latino Film Fest Creator

Three years ago, Cambridge resident Jose Barriga sat in a local coffee shop with a friend and first considered the idea of publicly screening Latino movies in his hometown.

This brainstorm became the Cambridge Latino Film Festival, which plays through this weekend and last year attracted an estimated 2,600 filmgoers.

Barriga and a group of dedicated volunteers have spent the last week ushering large crowds into packed screening rooms.

“We want to show non-Latinos how Latinos are,” Barriga says. “Demographically, Latinos are the largest minority in the U.S—there is a big interest to know about them.”

Barriga says he’s primarily interested in fighting stereotypes and presenting the “reality” of Latino experience in the United States and throughout Latin America.

When he moved to Boston from Los Angeles several years ago, Barriga says he became concerned with the absence of a local outlet for Latinos to educate others about their culture.

Film, Barriga says, seemed an especially accessible means of communication, and the idea for the festival was born.

The day after his coffee shop revelation, Barriga went to City Hall, but he was informed that he had missed the deadline to apply for a grant to fund the festival.

The delay gave him time to research the other major annual Latino film festivals in the U.S., which take place annually in New York and L.A. After visiting the New York and L.A. festivals, Barriga placed adds for volunteers in local newspapers and received and evaluated dozens of film submissions.

The Cambridge Latino Film Festival was inaugurated last year with 34 films shown at three small venues, and with little funding. But now, Barriga says, it is here to stay.

This year’s festival features a total of 56 films that will be shown at MIT, the Cambridge Public Library and the Harvard Film Archive (HFA). Barriga is especially pleased with the addition of the HFA, calling it “the best venue in New England for such a festival” because of its location on a major university campus.

Presenting short films, documentaries and feature films, the Cambridge Latino Film Festival is not lacking in variety.

“If a [Latin American] country is not represented it is because we did not receive any submissions,” says Barriga.

The films in the festival come from all over the Latin America and the U.S and are evaluated by a selection committee before making it onto the big screen.

To attract a large and diverse audience, Barriga says this year’s selection committee included members ranging “from MIT professors to a 68-year-old Salvadoran woman learning to write.”

The festival has a dual purpose of not only educating its audiences but also providing support and exposure for its featured filmmakers.

“It is a window for filmmakers to sell their work,” says Barriga, noting that a number of producers are attending this year’s screenings.

Barriga argues that American film producers have not traditionally sought after the Latino market.

The festival included a panel last Saturday on the current status of the Latino film market in the U.S., and Barriga hopes strong attendance will demonstrate widespread interest in Latino films.

But the festival’s ability to expand is contingent on its organizers’ ability to increase funding for the event—and to date, Barriga says, the budget has been meager.

He and the other organizers have received funding from Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for both festivals they have held and are working to expand the ranks of their financial supporters through this week’s events. While the New York and L.A. Latino Film Festivals have budgets of over $200,000, the Cambridge Latino Film festival survived this year on less than $5,000.

Certain luxuries, such as hotel rooms and transportation for filmmakers, are expected at other festivals but aren’t even a possibility in this one.

“I have a director from Mexico sleeping in my house,” Barriga says.

The lack of money has been a bit of a problem this year, but Barriga has already received sponsorship offers from several banks and Fox’s Latino film division.

Barriga says he hopes the Massachusetts festival will be as big as its L.A. and New York counterparts within five years.