I was hoping the photographer to whom I gave my business card would forward me the picture he took of me, Julian, and Edward James Olmos at the opening night gala of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. Maaayyybe when he gets around to unloading his memory card. I won't hold my breath. Will try to get another with our own camera during the festival.
Julian and I walked the red carpet behind Mayor Antonio Villagraigosa and Admiral Adama himself last night, watched the U.S. premiere of
Bella in the packed Rigler Theatre at The Egyptian after much fanfare from the mayor and Olmos himself, and then we mingled at the after-party for a bit with the likes of Jose Yenque, Silvana Arias, and some new friends, too. Hosted bar and lots of delicious sponsored Latin food, of course. This is like the Sundance of Latino film festivals, and it's a nice way to end our festival run.
We screened earlier this afternoon, along with some other very intense shorts, and a couple of lighter ones, though one of those lighter ones shifted gears nicely. Had a great, lyrical tone, and you can see how the director will handle the feature version that this short is meant to convey. Ours was programmed fairly well, I thought, though it was weird to watch people enter and exit the theatre through all the various shorts, almost like a revolving door. That said, there were still about 40 people in the theatre, which seats 76, by the time we wrangled our own Q&A. The person that introduced our program said there would be a conversation after the films, but never showed up to get it started. Before our screening, I had bumped into an actor-producer whom I'd met at Nosotros, and he said he had the same problem. So I took matters into my own hands and got all the filmmakers up front. We managed to have a bit of a chat with the audience before someone in the festival basically gave us the boot so they could bring in a crowd for another screening.
Special thanks to Matt Cedeno, Alejandro Chabán, and Courtney Rundell for making it out to the screening, along with our executive producer, Robert Boyle, and star Julian Franco's wife, as well as my own.
Afterward, we took these pics before going to dinner (pick your favorite):
I'm going to be at a conference tomorrow and Sunday, so that means I'll miss a good chunk of the festival's opening weekend, but I'll try to make up for it during the week. I'm still figuring out another scheduling snafu for the next weekend, but I'll post interesting items as they occur. You know, if they do.
