Cine Las Americas celebrates 10 years as Austin's portal to fine foreign film

By Chris Garcia
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Cine Las Americas International Film Festival marks its 10th year as one of Austin's biggest movie parties by growing even bigger. Organizers have upped the festival's length from five days to eight and it now boasts six venues, up from three.

The goal, say organizers, is to boost attendance from last year's 2,600 and offer viewers more chances to see a sampling of films by and about Latinos and indigenous people of the Americas — a cinema that, in places such as Mexico and Brazil, enjoys a rich and thriving history.

This year's festival began Thursday at the Paramount Theatre with the award-winning Mexican drama "The Violin" and continues through Thursday on screens across town, encompassing an astounding 80 features, documentaries and shorts.

These are some highlights:

• "How Much Further" — Two young women take a dramatic coming-of-age journey across Ecuador. (7 tonight and 7 p.m. Tuesday, Metropolitan)
• "Two Homelands: Cuba and the Night" — Christian Liffers' documentary limns intimate, extremely personal portraits of homosexuality in the context of Cuba's macho society and communist government. (9 tonight, Metropolitan)
• "Road to the Big Leagues" — Director Jerome Goodman examines what makes the Dominican Republic such fertile ground for great baseball players. (1 p.m. Saturday, Hideout)
• "In the Pit" — Juan Carlos Rulfo's artful doc explores the construction of the Second Deck, a monumental elevated freeway in Mexico City, and introduces the human faces behind it. Featuring outstanding visuals and striking industrial sounds that should play beautifully in the IMAX Theater at the Bullock Texas State History Museum. (7 p.m. Tuesday)

• Feature, documentary and shorts competitions, with more than 25 titles from Venezuela, Germany, Chile, Israel, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico, the United States and Canada, all concerning Latino themes and subjects. The films run the course of the festival.
• Emergencia Youth Film Day, 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday at the Carver Museum, is a day of free family-ready movies by filmmakers younger than 20. Nineteen shorts from Brazil, the United States and Puerto Rico will screen, followed by "Tocar y Luchar," a documentary about a youth orchestra in rural Latin America.
• The Iraq War Program features four movies about Latinos and the war: "The Short Life of Jose Antonio Gutierrez" (2 p.m. Sunday, Metropolitan), "To Disobey" (4 p.m. Saturday, Hideout), "Costa Rica, Inc." (11 a.m. Sunday, Hideout), "In the Trenches" (2 p.m. Sunday, Metropolitan) and the short "The Grass Grows Green" (4 p.m. Saturday during the International Short Film Showcase, Metropolitan).
• The Coca Culture Program looks at Bolivia's indigenous coca farmers, their culture and controversies with the road comedy "Who Killed the White Llama?" (6 p.m. Saturday, Metropolitan; 9:45 p.m. Tuesday, Alamo South) and the docs "Coca Lives" (2:30 p.m., Hideout), "Cocalero" (7 p.m. Wednesday, Metropolitan) and "Plenty of Evos: The Coca Growers of Chapare" (2:30 p.m. Saturday). Some of the filmmakers will be there to present their movies.
• "Inside the Circle," the closing night film, is Austinite Marcy Garriott's hailed doc about hip-hop and b-boy dance culture in Texas. The film won an audience award at this year's South by Southwest Film Festival, where it premiered. (7 p.m. April 26, Alamo South.)