When you listen to New York Latino Film Festival founder, Calixto Chinchilla, speak about the event, he sounds like a fresh entrepreneur ready to launch his first venture ever. The hustle and hunger seeps through with every word he speaks and the excitement in his voice. You wouldn’t believe that you’re listening to a man who has been successfully holding an annual, internationally recognized film festival for 15 years now. To think, Chinchilla’s idea for the festival was simply a way for him and the Latino filmmakers around him to get some recognition. Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine that the film fest that he worked on with his cousins out of their parents’ apartments would be as big as it is today.
Having little to no resources to nurture his ambitions for filmmaking, Chinchilla picked up photography and later studied marketing in college. When he wasn’t hitting the books or creating images, the Nuyorican was writing screenplays for short films. He went on to direct a couple of shorts, but then the obstacle was to find an outlet for audiences to actually watch these films. Chinchilla wasn’t only looking for an avenue for his and his buddies’ projects, though. He wanted something to help out the Latino community as a whole, since at that time (the 1990s) – and some might argue still to this day – the mainstream film industry hadn’t fully embraced the growing Latino population.
“I think people didn’t quite know what to do with [Latinos]. You had an entertainment industry that was open to us but didn’t quite know how to engage us,” Chinchilla told ‘LLERO, adding, “That’s when we thought: What if we created this space that did three things: combined community, educated, and also worked with studios and with people to try to get them to understand what Latinos were doing and the talent that we had?”
With a goal in mind, Chinchilla and his cousins began knocking on doors to get some help getting the festival off the ground. “One of those doors happened to be HBO, and they took a shot. When HBO came into play, it was like, ‘Oh, shoot! This is going to happen! This is for real!’”
Although Chinchilla and his team did encounter naysayers during their prep phase, from its first year out in 1999, it was evident that the New York Latino Film Festival was pure gold, and people in the industry knew it. But, it wouldn’t have been so without the tenacity of its creators.
“Like with any entrepreneur, I went into autopilot. Once I got into that mental state, then that was it, and that’s why we got so many pictures to commit, like Girl Fight. It was this big film that came from Sundance. It was our biggest acquisition. At the time, you had this up-and-coming actress named Michelle Rodriguez that no one really knew but a lot of people felt like she was going to blow up. And, this film literally goes from Sundance to Canada, and then, to this nobody festival called the New York Latino Film Festival. That’s kind of what helped to change the game. The studios trusted us,” Chinchilla recalled.
Although preparing for a film fest of such magnitude does put Chinchilla’s own filmmaking aspirations on hold, he says that as long as he’s helping other filmmakers present their works to audiences, he still feels accomplished. “[The festival] put me in a position to influence in another way. If I can help at all to move the needle, then I’m doing something. The more Latinos that we have in any position to help move the needle, even to this day, is important,” he explained.
Find out what’s in story at this years festival after the jump…
For this year’s festival, which kicks off Wednesday, August 22 through Sunday, August 26, Chinchilla continues to offer a platform for emerging Latino filmmakers. He told us of a young, Dominican filmmaker from the Bronx named Luis Santos, who Chinchilla says he and his team discovered on social media and commissioned him to shoot the official commercial for the 2018 New York Latino Film Festival.
“We found [Santos] on Instagram. There were a couple of directors that we were looking at, and this kid stuck out. He collaborated with us, worked with the crew, and shot the commercial,” Chinchilla told us, adding, “It’s crazy because we saw the trailer in full the other day, and to see this kid watching his own project moved me to tears, man. [Santos] spoke to me right after, and he said, ‘Film got me off the streets, and helped my mind escape from the streets.’ For me, moments like that make me stop and say to myself, ‘Okay, we’re doing the right thing.’”
As is customary for NYLFF, the festival will also host films produced overseas—from places like Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Some films that Chinchilla told us about include La Familia, directed by Gustavo Rondón Córdova, which is about a boy who shoots someone, and his father has to run away with him to protect his son. Then, there’s Monger, a documentary by Jeff Zorrilla, which follows three men who partake in the world of sexual tourism in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Other films include The Sentence, directed by Rudy Valdez, which delves into the consequences of mass incarceration and mandatory minimum drug sentencing; Make Love Great Again, directed by Aaron Agrasanchez, a love story of a U.S. citizen and a Mexican who have to prove the verity of their love to highly suspicious federal agents. Also, on the festival’s opening night, director Abner Benaim will be premiering a documentary on Latin American icon, Rubén Blades, titled Ruben Blades Is Not My Name—for which the multi-talented Panamanian artist and activist will be in attendance.
When asked if the film festival has reached the initial goal he had in mind when he first ventured into it, Chinchilla affirms that it has, and he credits God and his New York state of mind for it.
“A lot of it is just God, really. Whatever plan God put into play, I would have never imagined it would be this,” Chinchilla reflected. “Things have happened that I didn’t think could happen ever. I’m a kid from the projects, man—and I’m still like that mentally. There are things that keep you grounded. That’s what keeps me focused, it keeps me grounded.”
For more info or to purchase tickets to some of the films screening at this year’s New York Latino Film Festival, visit nylatinofilmfestival.com.