SCOTT BROCATO:
We'll start with you, Angie. For those who may not be familiar with it, tell us about the Femme Frontera Filmmaker Showcase and what it's about.
ANGIE REZA TURES:
Yeah, so our Femme Frontera Filmmaker Showcase is now in its eighth year. We are super excited about the films that we are about to share with everyone. They are absolutely incredible. We're super lucky to also be able to spotlight and celebrate the films that we've been able to directly support with funding these past couple of years, and so I'm very honored and excited that Persia Campbell is here today. She was our 2021 Femme Frontera filmmaking grant recipient, and from Juarez, and so we're very excited to be able to premiere her film this coming showcase, and she's going to talk a little bit about that.
And then Veronica Palafox, she's also from Juarez. She was our 2022 Femme Frontera filmmaking grant recipient. And so both filmmakers have been able to use that funding toward the production of their projects with the support of their communities as well, who all rallied to help make this happen. So we're extremely excited to be able to premiere their films this year.
The theme of our showcase is all about radical acceptance, powering through challenges, and always challenging the perception of our beautiful border communities; and women, gender roles, the LGBTQ community--just challenging a lot of current perspectives that tend to be very false. And so it's always a pleasure and a privilege to get a chance to really share these films with our audiences every year.
SCOTT BROCATO:
And about how many films were submitted this year?
ANGIE REZA TURES:
So we received over 100, and from those hundred we have to dwindle it down to an hour and a half program, and that is always such a difficult feat. But every year we expand a little bit more, and so we're excited.
This is our second year bringing a feature film to the forefront as well. We have a film called Silent Beauty that will take place on Saturday evening, that is all about a woman who navigates horrific grief and how she comes out the other side, and how our culture tends to influence what that journey is like. And so this woman, her name is Jasmin Mara Lopez, she is from New Orleans but also has tight familial connections with the border herself. And so we're very excited to be able to share that film. It has won numerous awards and gone on to do great things, and so being able to include a feature film that still represents the border and our people is a culture is very exciting.
SCOTT BROCATO:
So that film will be Saturday night. The shorts will be screened Friday night, and that will be at the Philanthropy Theater in the Plaza Theater in El Paso, correct?
ANGIE REZA TURES:
Correct. Both films you can see at the at the Plaza, yes.
SCOTT BROCATO:
Well, let's move on to you Persia Campbell, director of Con Vista Al Rio. Tell us about your film, what it's about and how it fits in with the themes that she was talking about.
PERSIA CAMPBELL:
I was actually talking about that with Angie when we were on our way to here.
It's a story about our border. You know, I think that a lot of stories about our border are seen like a place where people just pass on, or it’s just a bridge to go somewhere else. You know, there is a lot of people that comes from the South and wants to go to north, but I always have lived in south Juarez; I have 30 years of living there, so I'm thinking that I can offer like a perspective about the people who actually lives in there: that the border is a home, and all the things that evolve and change affect us. This story is about two kids that live in the border but they have a brother and sisters who went to the north, to the USA, and this story is about our people.
SCOTT BROCATO:
And when did you make it?
PERSIA CAMPBELL:
I made it last year.
SCOTT BROCATO:
Is this your first film?
PERSIA CAMPBELL:
No, I have a feature film, a documentary film. This is my second work.
SCOTT BROCATO:
And it was filmed in Juarez?
Yeah, it was filmed in Juarez, actually on the border, like on the river. The name, Con Vista Al Rio, that means, like, you can see the river. You know when these hotels offer you, like, you can see to the river. But these have like another context. It was actually shot on the on the river.
SCOTT BROCATO:
And were there any challenges that you encountered in making this film?
PERSIA CAMPBELL:
I work with kids. (laughs)
SCOTT BROCATO:
That's what they say: don’t work with animals and kids. (laughs)
PERSIA CAMPBELL:
Exactly! That’s what everyone says. And when I was working with my producer and my photographer, they say, you are actually working with animals AND with kids? (laughs)
But no, no, it was an incredible experience. I worked with them a lot before the shoot. I know them and I wanted to be pretty close to them.
A challenge, let me think about a challenge...more about the production stuff, like the locations. Maybe the river (which) didn't have a lot of water. And that was a problem for the story. But it was actually an incredible experience.
SCOTT BROCATO:
Well, Thursday night, there's a pitch fest in three locations: here in Las Cruces in the CMI Theater (inside Milton Hall at New Mexico State University), and also in El Paso and Juarez. What is the pitch fest? What's being pitched?
ANGIE REZA TURES:
So the pitch fest is so exciting. We launched it for the first time in April of this year, and it was our intention and our dream to be able to figure out a way that our three beautiful cities, El Paso, Juarez, and Las Cruces, could team up essentially to support each other, to share resources with each other, to lift each other up and each other's projects, and Pitch Fest was born.
And so what we conceptualized, along with Monica Ortiz Uribe and Sahiba Khan, who are wonderful advisers for Femme Frontera, was: we imagined having three parties simultaneously in each of the regions, in each of the cities, and then connecting them via Zoom. And at each location there would be one person who would pitch their film idea, or what they're currently doing in production, or what they're currently doing in post-production, and essentially just connecting with the audiences and asking for anything: from funding to resources to other crew members to feedback. If you're a script writer, you can pitch and read a scene and get feedback from the audience.
So it's not a traditional sense of pitching for funding, though that can definitely be an element of it. It's more, This is my project, I'm looking for support. And during the last Pitch Fest, we had one of our wonderful pitch presenters (who) was looking for puppets, and this was pitched in Las Cruces, and someone in Juarez knew somebody and connected them. So it's just such a beautiful way for our three regions to, again, just share talents and resources and thoughts and ideas with each other; and so we're super excited to do it again and to integrate it in the festival. And the fact that CMI (Creative Media Institute) is part of this year's fest, is just incredible. And so we welcome and invite all artists, all filmmakers, all cinephiles, to come and listen and support and be part of this really fun party.
SCOTT BROCATO:
And what time is that Thursday night?
ANGIE REZA TURES:
At 6:00 PM.
SCOTT BROCATO:
And the films Friday night at the Philanthropy Theatre in downtown El Paso, inside the Plaza Theatre, will be at...?
ANGIE REZA TURES:
At 7.
SCOTT BROCATO:
And the feature film Saturday night?
ANGIE REZA TURES:
It's at 6.
And so we also have two other events happening on Saturday. At 10 AM at Alamo Drafthouse Montecillo in El Paso, we have our student showcase. And so those are films that have been worked on super hard all year by our wonderful students, both youth and adult, who are going to share their projects.
At 3:00 PM we have an incredible panel that is going to be made up of film makers all along the border region in Texas. And so this panel is specifically going to address the logistics and the challenges of what it means to make films when you're on the border. And not just sort of the practical challenges, although those will definitely be addressed, but also the ethical challenges: the ethical needs that one has to know and understand before coming into our region and trying to tell a story about our communities. And so we're also emphasizing the importance of why it's important that the people from our regions also continue to be able to tell and own these narratives, because they are ours, ultimately.
SCOTT BROCATO:
And the website for more information is from frontera.org. And can one purchase tickets from there too?
ANGIE REZA TURES:
Yes.
Angie Reza Torres, Persia Campbell, thank you for joining us today and talking about Femme Frontera 2023, happening this weekend in downtown El Paso at the Plaza Theatre. Thanks for joining us.
ANGIE REZA TURES:
Thank you, Scott.
PERSIA CAMPBELL:
Thanks to you!
