Ecuador, Tango Star In OLA Film Fest
Minerva Perez is not an absolute newcomer to the OLA Latino Film Festival, having been involved in its setup in 2007, but this year’s, the 13th iteration presented by the Organizacion Latino Americana, is the first she has put together as that organization’s executive director, a post she assumed in February.
The festival will present “Un Tango Mas (Our Last Tango),” a relatively big-budget film from Argentina directed by German Kral and executive produced by Wim Wenders, tomorrow evening at 7 at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill. The screening will be preceded at 5:30 by a bilingual docent tour of the exhibition “Artists Choose Artists” and, at 6, by a reception with Dona Sarita Mezcal, which is imported by the Kiembock family of East Hampton.
Saturday the festival will move to Guild Hall in East Hampton, where an Ecuadorian feature, “Vengo Volviendo (Here and There),” will be screened along with two shorts, “Tereza,” a film by Natalie Camou, a Mexican-American filmmaker, that deals with domestic violence, and “Normal,” the Venezuelan director Vadim Lasca’s film about the relationship between a Chavista and an anti-Chavista that reflects that country’s political division.
Another mezcal tasting, this with the producer and director of “Vengo Volviendo,” Gabriel Paez and Isabel Rodas, will take place at 5, the film will play at 6, and the producer and director will answer questions following the screening.
Ms. Perez took a new approach to this year’s festival. “I actively sought out independent and new filmmakers from across the globe,” she said, “putting out a call for Spanish-language, English-subtitled films through a well-known means, Without a Box. ‘Vengo Volviendo’ came back from that call, and it was a find. When I saw it, I thought, ‘Wow, this is something special!’ The camerawork is beautiful, and it’s visually like a love letter to a large area in Ecuador called Azuay. Many people in the Hamptons come from that region.”
“Vengo Volviendo,” which won the audience award at the second Ecuadorian Film Festival in New York City in June, tells the story of Ismael, a 22-year-old determined to immigrate to the United States. After he agrees on a price with a coyote, his best friend returns after eight years abroad, and they set out on a tour of their province, where they encounter the beautiful landscape and the people, stories, and legends of the indigenous culture.
While that film was made by professional filmmakers, “they chose to create very organically a team to learn the art of filmmaking and to be involved in working on the picture, some on sound, some on camera, some as actors,” according to Ms. Perez. “Working with rural communities, they built a company to create and distribute this work.”
“Un Tango Mas” is the story of Maria Nieves Rego, 80, and Juan Carlos Copes, 83, the two most famous dancers in the history of tango. The couple danced together for nearly 50 years, during which they alternately loved and hated each other, separated several times, but always reunited, until he left her for a younger woman.
The film brings them together for one last time onstage, and both are interviewed, although Ms. Rego does most of the talking, “offering a loved-and-abandoned perspective more suitable for tango’s melodrama than that of Copes,” according to a Hollywood Reporter review by John DeFore.
The principals tell their story to a group of young tango dancers and choreographers from Buenos Aires, who transform the most beautiful and dramatic moments of Mr. Copes’s and Ms. Rego’s lives into beautifully filmed tango-choreographies.
Speaking of the film festival’s audience over the years, Ms. Perez said, “It’s typically been half Latino, half Anglo, and we like that because a lot of what OLA wants to do is act as a cultural bridge in as many ways as possible. Art is one of our key ways to really celebrate the riches we have here from all the different countries and communities.”
Tickets to tomorrow’s program at the Parrish Art Museum are $10, free for members and students. Ticket to all three Guild Hall films are $15, while $10 will admit one to either the feature or the two shorts.