National Gathering of Latin Canadian Filmmakers
Panel: Crossing Borders
Saturday, May 13
10 AM to 11:30 AM
Maison de développement durable (Salle Clark), 50 Ste-Catherine Ouest
Facilitated by Milena Salazar, this panel will reflect on the different approaches used by curators / community programmers Anto Astudillo, Jorge Lozano Lorza and Christian Sida Valenzuela to create new screening opportunities for works that side-step the traditional film festival submission path. Discussion will then open up to consider ways in which new markets can be created for the work of Latin Canadian filmmakers in Latin America, Iberia and beyond.
Animé par Milena Salazar, ce panel réfléchira aux différentes approches utilisées par les commissaires / programmatxrs communautaires Anto Astudillo, Jorge Lozano Lorza et Christian Sida Valenzuela pour créer de nouvelles opportunités de projection pour les œuvres, en contournant le chemin traditionnel de soumissions aux festivals de films. La discussion s’ouvrira ensuite sur les possibilités de créer de nouveaux marchés pour les œuvres des cinéastes latinx-canadiens en Amérique latine, en Ibérie et au-delà.
Anto Astudillo (they/them) is a filmmaker, performance artist and curator from Santiago, Chile, based in Brooklyn, NY. Rooted in theater and martial arts, Anto explores dynamic interconnections between the practice of embodiment and experimental cinema to create visual portraits of personal and political themes in the form of 16mm film, video and performance. Anto has taught 16mm film production and is one of the founding members of the AgX Film Collective. They guest curated film programs at Anthology Film Archives, Maysles Documentary Center, Go Shorts Film Festival, Uppsala Kort Film Festival and is currently the Program Director at Millennium Film Workshop and the Lead Programmer of TRANSlations: Seattle Trans Film Festival.
Anto was a Curatorial Fellow at Oberhausen Film Seminar (2021) and Flaherty Seminar (2017) and is a 2022 FCA Emergency Fund Grantee. Anto has been a featured artist for DocMontevideo, Corrient.es and Mills Gallery BCA. Their work has screened at Ann Arbor Film Festival, Frontera Sur, Arica Nativa, Emma Goldman Film Festival, WILDDOGS Screendance Festival, Montreal Underground, Artifact Small Format, Other Cinema and others. | antoastudillo.com
Jorge Lozano Lorza is an immigrant mixed-race artist and filmmaker born in Colombia. He has been painting and filming, and making videos, sound, performance and installation works since he came to Canada in 1971. He has made over 170 movies—works that live not in-between, but within cultures. His work is a reflection of his personal commitment to epistemological disobedience and the investigation of different ways of thinking, feeling and doing to see the world differently, to have a visible presence and to create new coordination with living and nonliving matter. Jorge’s fiction shorts and experimental works have been screened at TIFF and Sundance, and internationally at many festivals, museums and galleries, and community cultural centers.
In 1993 he initiated the Crossing Borders Conference/Film Festival with Ricardo Acosta, the co-creation of aluCine Toronto Latin Media Festival with Sinara Rozo in 1995 and converSalon in collaboration with Alexandra Gelis in 2010. Since 1991 he has been facilitating self-representations video workshops for marginalized Latin and non-Latin youth and art students in Canada, Colombia, Brazil, Perú, Venezuela. Jorge is currently working on several moving image-deliriums, architectural installations and film fetish short forms in Toronto, Ontario, where he lives.
Christian Sida Valenzuela has been involved with the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival since 2006. He was the Programming Director from 2008-2010 and the Executive Director from 2011-2021. In 2022, he became VLAFF’s Artistic Director. Christian is a well-known figure in the Latin American film circuit and has been a jury member at the film festivals in Rio de Janeiro, Havana, Guadalajara, Biarritz, among others. Christian was also a jury member for the Colombian National Documentary Prize. Christian is additionally the founder and director of the Festival del Nuevo Cine Mexicano de Durango in Mexico. In 2015 he received an official recognition from the Consulate General of Colombia in Vancouver for his work promoting Colombian cinema. He is the director and co-creator of the 2022 feature Santuario: A Punk Portrait of Paty Aguirre.
Milena Salazar is a filmmaker, editor, and arts worker dedicated to creating and championing artist driven, socially engaged documentaries. Her award-winning films and editing projects have screened in festivals around the world (including IDFA, TIFF, Hot Docs and DOC NYC), as well as in galleries and streaming services. Her latest film Estelas received the Best Short Film Award at the 2019 Costa Rica International Film Festival. Alongside her film production work, she has held several roles in film festivals and arts organizations in Vancouver, BC, such as Programming Consultant for the DOXA Documentary Film Festival, Canadian Documentaries Programmer for the Vancouver International Film Festival, and coordinator of the BC Chapter of the Documentary Organization of Canada. She is currently directing her first feature documentary in Canada and developing new projects in her hometown of San José, Costa Rica.| milenasalazar.com