Festival celebrates Latino film, culture, stories

Long before they wrote stories, human beings told them. In many cultures, oral communication remains the storytelling vehicle of choice.

According to filmmaker Ray Santisteban, curator of the campus’s fifth annual CineFest, Latinos rely heavily — but not exclusively — on the spoken word to convey the panorama of their experience. Consequently, the 2003 CineFest has broadened its horizons to include artists of oral literature as well as film. One of America’s premier Latino film festivals, CineFest will be held on and off campus Wednesday-Sunday, Oct. 22-26.

CineFest began with a partnership in 1997 between the university and Santisteban, at that time a visiting professor of Chicana/o studies. Santisteban served as guest curator for the inaugural festival and has continued in that capacity every year since then.

Now based in Austin, Texas, he says that oral literature and cinema play active roles in helping Latinos of various cultures establish identities in the United States.

“Cinema has been integral to the Latino literary movement,” Santisteban says. “The very first Chicano film, Luis Valendez’s 1967 “I am Joaquim,’ was based on the epic poem by Corky Gonzales.”

Santisteban will join fellow filmmaker Hector Galan for the premiere screening of an excerpt of their documentary series, “Visiones: Latino Art and Culture,” which will be broadcast on public television in January. This year’s CineFest has been subtitled “Visiones” in honor of the film. The screening, on Thursday, Oct. 23, at 7 p.m. at the Orpheum Theatre on State Street, reveals the relationship between spoken literature, film and identity, Santisteban says.

“In the U.S., the lack of resources for printing has helped keep the oral tradition going. The extensive use of corridos, songs with messages and stories, is seen as a means of spreading news and information throughout the communities,” he says.

This year marks the debut of another partnership, this one between CineFest and the Wisconsin Book Festival, which run concurrently in Madison. CineFest organizer William Ney, outreach coordinator for the Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies program, which sponsors CineFest, says that this cooperation inspired the oral-tradition thread that infuses this year’s CineFest.

“Our pairing up with the Wisconsin Book Festival helped CineFest cross over artistic expressions beyond film into spoken literature and music,” he says.

Indeed, a number of nationally recognized spoken-word artists will gather at CineFest to honor the lifetime achievements of Piri Thomas, considered el padrino of the form in this country. A master of the written as well as spoken word, Thomas’ first novel, “Down These Mean Streets,” published in 1967, featured an innovative bilingual style and influenced such contemporary cultural leaders as filmmaker Spike Lee and actor/comedian John Leguziamo.

According to Ney, one important goal is to inspire a new generation of artists creating spoken-word literature and other art. To that end, many of the artists will visit area schools and community centers. Severino Albuquerque, LACIS director, says that CineFest is a valuable educational resource both on and off campus.

“It is a beyond-the-classroom educational tool for our majors, and also encourages stronger ties with the larger community, including Madison’s growing Spanish-speaking community and the arts community,” he says.

In addition to LACIS and the Wisconsin Book Festival, other partners are the Arts Institute, Department of Comparative Literature, American Indian Studies Program, Global Studies Program, Cinematheque, Centro Hispano of Dane County, the Madison Area Technical College Global Horizons Series, University Book Store, Wisconsin Educational Communications Board, Wisconsin Film Office, Wisconsin Union Directorate, Wisconsin Public Television and WORT Radio.

List of CineFest activities: http://www.cinefest.wisc.edu.

More on the Wisconsin Book Festival: http://www.wisconsinbookfestival.org/.