This year's edition of the Southern indie film fest focuses on Latinx voices, exploring the growing Latino population in the Southeastern United States as well as Latin America. Latino films are part of every section of the festival, and several shorts blocks are devoted specifically to Latino films. The festival also created an online series of videos, DACA Voices, letting several students with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status living in Columbia, South Carolina tell their own stories.
A block of nine narrative short films by filmmakers around the globe, these films come from a partnership with the Oaxaca FilmFest. They include Las Nadadoras de Villa Rosa from Argentina, Little Syria and Cuerdas en la Vida from Mexico, and more.
A series of narrative and documentary shorts from Latina filmmakers living along the US-México border. “These films revise the cultural narrative entirely through the simple act of showing the truth,” Femme Frontera founder Angie Tures writes. “The six women filmmakers of Femme Frontera are unapologetic in their portrayals of sacrifice, perseverance, sexism, bigotry, and radical hope.”
El Sur is the South as you’ve never seen it before. These exquisitely rendered visions of the contemporary Latinx experience offer audiences a much-needed antidote to the poisonous politics of the moment, as well as a stark and unforgiving commentary on a national prejudice left unchecked. With boundless compassion, the filmmakers of El Sur document the struggles, sacrifices, and joys unique to the Latinx community, elevating stories of men, women, and gender nonconforming individuals who transform the South for the better by choosing to call it home.
Art, Food, Music & Games
It's not just films! Indie Grits brings art, food and music to Columbia too. Special projects include a collective of local Latinx artists convened especially for the festival, The Visiones Artist Cohort, who worked together to produce related works for the festival; a Saturday afternoon Food Truck Parranda, with music and food from the Caribbean and Latin America; and even indie games (video, board, card, you name it).
Check out the Indie Grits website for more details.
Cinelandia is proud to be a media sponsor of Indie Grits.