Fall film festival season continues with three such events (that we know of) this week, the biggest being Cine+Mas, aka The San Francisco Latino Film Festival. Its 16th edition opens this Fri/11 at the Roxie with a local highlight: Mabel Valdiviezo’s feature directorial debut Prodigal Daughter, a first-person documentary in which the Merced Heights resident reconciles with the family in Peru she stopped communicating with for 16 years.
Busy in Lima’s rebellious underground art scene amidst that country’s violent political turmoil, her parents concerned that she was “mentally ill…a terrorist…or a lesbian!,” Valdiviezo fled in 1993, winding up an undocumented immigrant with little English in San Francisco. Her new life gradually stabilized, but for various reasons she was reluctant to maintain any contact with the old one. Utilizing plenty of archival footage (both of historic and personal events), Prodigal Daughter traces a complicatedly autobiographical tale whose occasional use of animation and collage underline the subject’s background as a painter. There will be an opening night party after the screening, with filmmakers expected to attend.
The next night (also at the Roxie) brings La Cocina by Alonso Rizpalacios, whose Gueros, Museo and A Cop Movie have over the last decade made it clear he’ll be one of the great Mexican directors for some years to come. Based loosely on a 1957 play by late English writer Arnold Wesker, updated for an era rife with immigration issues, it’s a long (139 minutes), hectic, mostly B&W, sometimes dazzling ensemble piece set primarily in the kitchen of a Manhattan restaurant whose staff is as diverse—and argumentative—as the United Nations. Among them are figures played by Raul Briones and Rooney Mara, a cook and a waitress who have additional cause for tension during a shift already laden with more than enough interpersonal conflict. Sometimes too conspicuously theatrical and/or showoff-y, this is nonetheless further demonstration of Rizpalacios’ singular world-class talent.
Other in-person programs during Cine+Mas (through Nov. 2) take place at Artists Television Access, Mission Cultural Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF Main Library, and La Pena in Berkeley. There is also a virtual component whose streaming access commences Fri/25, ending Nov. 3. In addition to numerous shorts showcases, there are narrative and documentary features from or about the Dominican Republic (Insular, Coexistence), Cuba (Lazaro & the Shark), Chile (Orbit), Colombia (Igualada), Brazil (Skin of Glass), etc., plus more from Mexico (Dead Man’s Switch, Phantom Love, Las Tres Sisters, Kumbia Net) and the U.S. (The Muralists’ Beautiful Pain, Cajita, Lucha: A Wrestling Tale). The official closer on Nov. 2 at YBCA is Ray Figueroa’s Puerto Rican period epic Once Upon a Time in the Caribbean. For full schedule, program, location and ticket info on Cine+Mas16, go here.
The Albany Film Festival’s 14th edition, running Thu/10, Sat/12, and Sun/13 this week at the Rialto Cinemas Cerrito, consists of three loosely themed bills of shorts—many from Bay Area filmmakers, but otherwise running a wide gamut of subject matter, genres and techniques. A “Greenfest” bill on opening night leans towards environmentally conscious documentaries. Saturday morning, the “Living on Earth” program encompasses meditations on homelessness, gender identity, bull riding, and the politics of vaccination in Kenya. Sunday a.m.’s “Connections” throws together a melange of playful animation, short narratives, and nonfiction—the latter including Abby Ginzburg’s Judging Juries, about how economics factor into racial diversity (or the lack thereof) in Oakland court trials. Full info is available here.
Even more overtly activist in its content is the 15th Annual Fist Up Film Festival—which is already in-progress, but alas we heard about it too late to publicize the opening weekend. There’s still quite a bit to come, however, with Wed/9 shorts bill “Culture Keepers” bringing together nine multinational miniatures ranging from dance to animation.
Also at La Pena (on Thurs/10) is Contessa Gayles’ “visual album” Songs from the Hole, about incarcerated hiphop and soul artist James “JJ’88” Jacobs; Eriberto Gualinga’s Helena from Sarayaku (Sat/12), a look at indigenous peoples’ fight against oil-industry despoiling of their traditional lands; and on Sun/13, The Creation Story, a “medicine film” in which Jasper Young Bear relates a foundational Native American mythology with great pertinence for our particular moment. On Fri/11 at Eastside Arts Alliance in Oakland there’s also a screening of the Oscar-nominated Bobi Wine: The People’s President, about the Ugandan activist, musician and politician (read 48 Hills’ interview with the filmmakers here). For info on all remaining Fist Up events, go here.
