It's been a somewhat frustrating week. We had high hopes for this year's Los Angeles Latino Film Festival since this was the first year at the Arclight in Hollywood. A beautiful space, top notch screens--a wonderful venue to discover new films in the middle of Hollywood. While there were emails each day relating the days events (a vast new improvement), it was impossible to find out what the repeat screenings would be and which films had been canceled. Posting this on the web site would have been nice--this is basic stuff. Putting on a film festival is hard work and takes a cadre of staff and volunteers who are running around for a week putting out fires and getting very little sleep. The trick is making it seamless and LALIFF is still not there. Even the procedure to pick up tickets changed mid-week, making in harder to get in to see desired screenings.
Los Angeles absolutely deserves and must have a top notch Latino Film Festival in 2007. The explosion of films from Latin America, the U.S. and Spain means there is no lack of films. And there is competition: for years AFI and the Los Angeles Film Festival have bolstered their Latino selections and what they feature is what should be at LALIFF in terms of quality and diversity.
In the end though, it's about the movies, and the week at Arclight did provide a chance to catch something engaging that might not end up on a screen somewhere near you sometime soon.
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