It's been another negative year forSanta Ana, pero güey, when is it ever positive? Two thousand four has rewarded Orange County's seat with a university study deeming it the toughest city in the United States to live in, the threat of a 37-story Freudian skyscraper raping a residential neighborhood, and state API scores that rank schools chief Al Mijares' charges as some of the worst-performing in the state. What's worse, Santa Ana's joke of a City Council, led by el caudillo Miguel Pudillo, continues to—let's rip off Mike Davis' delicious critique of Orange County in last Sunday's New York Times parachute dispatch here—loll around like Pompeians as the country's youngest, most-Latino, most-Spanish-speaking, most-crowded town stews like a dream deferred.
It's a thankful truism that Latinos love films. So Pulido and company can rest easy for the next two weeks as two Santa Ana-based events, the first-ever Orange County Latino Film Festival and Santiago Canyon College's fifth-annual Latin Film Festival, offer cinematic balm to Santa Ana's restless masses. But as far as film festivals go, the inaugural Orange County Latino Film Festival doesn't seem like much. Scheduled for four days starting Thursday, Oct. 21 at Santa Ana's historic Fiesta Teatro, the revival groups together 13 features and nine shorts, with most of the presentations including cast and crew discussions afterward.
There will be some goodies, to be sure. The 2002 Mexican photoplay De la Calle (Streeters) combines the themes of Los Olvidados and The 400 Blows to concentrate on 15-year-old Rufino (Luis Fernando Peña) as he tries to survive and find himself in the too-bad-to-be-real-but-they-are slums of Mexico City. Continuing the trend of presenting the world's largest city as exciting hell, the 10-minute short Día de Suerte (A Lucky Day) narrates the aftereffects and consequences of a car theft—”one of the capital's most common crimes,” according to the film. And two of the more enjoyable South American features are Azul y Blanco (Blue and White), the Shakespearean story of two love-struck fans from soccer clubs whose rivalries makes the upcoming Boston Red Sox-New York Yankees series look as exciting as a Phoenix Cardinals-Miami Dolphins contest, and Hoy y Mañana (Today and Tomorrow), a pulled-from-the-headlines film regarding a woman who resorts to prostitution in order to make the rent in Argentina's IMF-caused hell.
Since this is the first foray for the Orange County Latino Film Festival, there are some glaring omissions. Festival organizer Manny Saldivar: since you're now the Robert Redford of Latino Orange County, where are the Santa Ana boys behind Betrayal and Violations: Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s, the first documentary on the forced deportation of Mexican-Americans during the Great Depression? Or guerrilla filmmaker/punk icon Martín Sorrondeguy, the Santa Ana resident behind the defining Chicano punk doc Más Allá de los Gritos? We're giving you a pass this time and will attribute these blatant oversights to virginal jitters, but as the years and fests pass by, your selection process should—hell, it better—improve.
Santiago Canyon College's fest is the better offering of the two Santa Ana film festivals. Sure, the campus is located deep in the Orange hills, downwind from Holy Sepulcher Cemetery—love dem ashy scents!—so this isn't ostensibly a Santa Ana event. But Santiago Canyon College is a part of the Santa Ana-based Rancho Santiago Community College District, and its Board of Trustees is hell-bent on improving the campus at the expense of Santa Ana College. 'Mano, what is it in that city's tacos that makes its leaders so uncaring about constituents?
Politics aside, the Santiago Canyon College Latin Film Festival is great, especially impressive given that Orange County Latino Film Festival is better financed. Granted, only four films are screening, and they'll all appear on VHS/DVD stretched onto a big screen. But what films they are! Opening night on Oct. 15 brings Danzón, a so-so 1991 Mexican farce on dancing. The following day, however, brings Brazilian director Walter Salles' Oscar-nominated 1998 effort Central Station, the story of a woman who befriends an orphan. One of the older plots in cinema, yes, but Salles—whose current yarn, The Motorcycle Diaries, is packing in all of la naranja's self-respecting lefties—manages to make the cute-kid cycle fresh thanks to Fernanda Montenegro, whose emotive mug earned her one of the few Best Actress Oscar nominations doled out to a foreign actress.
The festivities continue a week later on Oct. 21 with a movie I won't comment on since I've never seen—Miel para Oshun (Honey for Oshun). But one of the better reels to grace screens this month will conclude the festival: Camila, the 1985 retelling of the famous mid-19th Century affair between Camila O'Gorman, daughter of gentry, and a Catholic priest. The sex scenes are steamy, the metaphorical commentary (the film came mere years after the end of Argentina's Dirty War) much better than The Motorcycle Diaries, and the conclusion tragic enough to both provoke tears and cursing—much like Santa Ana itself.
ORANGE COUNTY LATINO FILM FESTIVAL AT TEATRO FIESTA, 305 E. FOURTH ST., SANTA ANA, (949) 258-2000; WWW.OCLFF.COM. OPENS THURS., OCT. 21. CALL FOR TIMES AND PRICES THROUGH OCT. 24; LATIN FILM FESTIVAL AT SANTIAGO CANYON COLLEGE, 8045 E. CHAPMAN AVE., ROOM D-101, ORANGE, (714) 628-4900. FRI. AND OCT. 22, 6 P.M. FREE.
