CULTURE MIX - Things are heating up - Success of the genre makes it harder for L:A. Latino film fest workers to fill their bill.
Marlene DERMER, founder and executive director of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, tries not to show the stress of her job as she gamely greets a visitor this week at her cramped Hollywood offices, busy as a boiler room operation. She really shouldn't be taking time for lunch, with four days left before the premiere of the week-long cinema celebration, now in its 11th year. As she enters the elevator, she passes a delivery boy wheeling in buckets of takeout for her staff, a smile masking her guilt for leaving her post even briefly.
As soon as she hits the sidewalk, the lady-like Dermer lights up a cigarette, cupping the match in her fine fingers and huddling against the scruffy building at Hollywood and Highland. She recently picked up the habit again, explains the svelte 45-year-old, sporting a long silk scarf wrapped around her neck. Over lunch, she'll joke about being blamed for everything that goes wrong at the last minute, pretending to pull her hair out with the expressive gestures of someone who studied mime.
'El Camino' actress: A caption accompanying an article in the Oct. 6 Calendar section about the L.A. Latino International Film Festival misidentified the actress photographed as Victoria Abril. The actress, who was pictured with actor Alberto Amarilla in a scene from the Spanish film "El Camino de los Ingleses" ("Summer Rain"), was Maria Ruiz.
The days before the festival are particularly hectic. Her latest emergency involves a film from Argentina, a '50s-era crime drama titled "La Seal" (The Signal), which arrived without English subtitles. Too late to send it back, Dermer got a local lab to add subtitles by calling in a connection from her stint at Paramount Studios, where she had supervised the adaptation of new movies for foreign consumption.
That's just one of the challenges in running an international festival that works in the opposite direction, presenting Spanish-language films for domestic consumption. Starting Sunday, L.A. audiences will get the chance to see more than 100 feature films, shorts and documentaries from Spain, Latin America and the U.S. that otherwise would never come here. After a long run at the Egyptian Theatre, the festival this year moves to the ArcLight Cinemas.
Latino cinema -- whether in Spanish, English or Portuguese -- was largely ignored in this country a dozen years ago when Dermer joined forces with actor Edward James Olmos to launch the festival as a vehicle for exposing U.S audiences to Latino culture. Nowadays, Latino filmmakers have more options for reaching the U.S. market, where their films are often celebrated rather than shunned, an acceptance symbolized by the Oscar nominations showered this year on three top Mexican directors and their films.
