Award-Winning Latin Films Come to UW-Milwaukee

For the 38^th consecutive time, UWM’s Center of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) hosted its annual Latin American Film Festival on April 8-14; the festival was host to a number of award-winning Latin films, which were completely free of charge for the public at the union cinema.

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies is a department at UWM which grew directly from a Peace Corps training center in the early 1960s, and rapidly become a federally funded National Resource Center for Latin American Studies in 1965.

Julie Kay Kline, the associate director of the center, and has been the programmer of the series for over 25 years. She says there has been a rising audience outside of the university in the past decade.

“We began this series in a classroom full of CLACS Students back in the late sixties,” said Kline. “Its still not a big festival, but it allows us to show a wide range of Latin films within a couple weeks’ time. Additionally, we make them completely free of charge in order to attract Milwaukee people to our campus, interact with them, and allow them to explore the cultural arts that our university has to offer.”

According to Kline, there is a constant search for new innovative Latin American films in order to show them at the festival. However, they do pay special attention to award-winning films such as the Brazilian animated film, Boy and the World, which was nominated for a golden trophy award back in February for best animation. It was also the first official animated film that has ever played at UWM’s film festival.

Additionally, this year they also were host to the Venezuelan film Desde Alla, which was the winner of a Golden Lion for best film at the 2015 Venice Film Festival. This is the Latin American film that has won that prestigious award.

This film was the prime choice for Ester Suarez Felipe, who is a Spanish instructor at the university and has made it a requirement for over 15 years to view one of the films of the festival as a class. This requirement is specific to her Spanish 319 course, which is targeted for advanced speaking and listening heritage speakers. She says this is the only course in which she has made it a requirement to view one film series as a class, but she plans to extend that policy to her Spanish 308 course in future semester to come.

“This is a great opportunity for my students to view original films that are essential to the Hispanic culture,” said Suarez. “When I was a teaching assistant, I would encourage students to go, but it wasn’t until I became an instructor that I made it a requirement.”

For the most part, Suarez hasn’t had many objections from her students about having to go watch a movie as a requirement for a course. She believes it’s a good way to submerge students in the Latin American film world, even if it is for only an hour and a half.

Virginia Villarreal, one of Suarez’s 308 students this year and a major in Spanish and communication, was a first time attendee of the festival. She says it most definitely won’t be her last.

“I love the fact that these movies are able to teach you aspects of Latin American life that you can’t learn in a classroom,” said Villarreal. “I fully encourage students that haven’t had the opportunity to go to the festival, to try it at least once before they graduate. I promise them they won’t regret it one bit.”