community CINEARTE
LATINX QUEER FESTIVAL IT TAKES A VILLAGE
by tim parks
CineArte Latinx Queer Festival returns for a fifth year with its stated focus on “indigenous identities through film, art and videos.” CineArte has been a group effort from its inception and one that has seen its attendance grow into an event hosting 1,800 people last year and promises to be even grander for 2018. The Rage Monthly spoke with Director of Cultural Arts Jon Imparato, to find
out how The Center’s festival came together, what will be going on during the three-day event and how politics have influenced this year’s entries. Inspiration for CineArte struck when he and Adelina Anthony did the play,
Bruising for Besos, which eventually became a movie and got Imparato and his colleagues thinking about the lack of queer Latino representation on the film festival circuit. “There’s nothing in Los Angeles that’s specifically a film and arts festival for the queer Latino community,” he said. “We have Fusion, which is done by our good friends at Outfest who we work with and collaborate. But Fusion is for people of color in general, which is wonderful and we support it totally, but due to the demographics of Los Angeles, it seems bizarre that there was nothing specific to Latino artists who are queer.”
The idea of combining the different facets that fall under the art world’s
umbrella was a “no brainer” according to Imparato who opined, “If we are going to do a film festival, we should combine it with an art exhibit because we have
this amazing gallery. I have a programmer, Karla Legaspy, who does films, I have a customer that books entertainment for the Latino community specifically and to curate a terrific exhibit was not that difficult. I know enough queer artists and when it became these three components, they all just went together and worked really well.”
Imparato gave us the rundown on what will
It’s such a big deal for us, we’re hoping to see more families. When you bring your grandmother, your aunt and your parents,
they come and they’re kind of blown away.
be happening during the three-day festival. “We started this thing five years ago and it’s a true film festival. There’s an art exhibit that’s curated by Ruben Esperanza and that has a group show of about 10 to 12 artists, which is amazing. Then we have entertainment, which is a group of performance art, to singers and whatever else we come up with,” he stated. “There’s community people at outreach tables where they can promote their Latino organizations, a DJ and some music, so when you go in and out of the theatre for a film, there’s always music and something happening.” Falling under the category of “something happening” including today’s political climate, the wacky White House, the building of walls and the dashing of dreamers’ dreams; Imparato said this fact was definitely reflected in the submissions they received for this year’s festival. “Yes, absolutely!” He exclaimed. “We do a lot of little CineArte events to keep us in the public eye of what we’re doing throughout the year. We have been getting films about being undocumented and that’s really important to us. There’s a web series calledUndocumented, it’s quite startling how good it is. We screened four episodes as a little teaser for CineArte, and the place was packed!” Something else that is very important to Imparato and CineArte this year is an emphasis on family, so much so that they have created a special day around it. “It’s such a big deal for us, we’re hoping to see more families. When you bring your grandmother, your aunt and your parents, they come and they’re kind of blown away,” he explained. “It’s this thing where they just don’t think that the queer community could have built a building like the Village, it’s just so beautiful. There’s all of these people when they come, everyone’s so happy and it upscales the whole thing for them. The goal is to help normalize it and we’re trying really hard to get people who haven’t come before.”
CineArte 2018: A Latinx Queer Festivalwill be held fromFriday, April 20 through Sunday, April 22 at the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s The Village at Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 N McCadden Place. For more info, a full lineup of events, art offerings and film selections, or to purchasetickets, go
tolalgbtcenter.org.
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RAGE monthly | MARCH 2018
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