By STEVE STRUNSKY
Associated Press Writer
September 30, 2004, 5:51 PM EDT
NEWARK, N.J. — Moviegoers are most likely to associate the Newark Museum with the annual Black Film Festival it has hosted for the past 30 years.
But this weekend the museum will acknowledge the growing influence of Hispanic culture on New Jersey and film with its first annual Cinema Latino festival.
The three-day festival begins at 7 p.m. Friday with a screening of “Bought and Sold,” a feature film set in Jersey City, written and directed by Michael Tolajian.
Saturday’s bill, beginning at 5 p.m., includes two features, “Ballad of a Soldier,” directed by Kinan Valdez, and “Manito,” written and directed by Eric Eason. A short film, “White Like the Moon,” written and directed by Marina Gonzalez Palmier, also will be shown.
The festival concludes with a Sunday matinee, a 2:30 p.m. screening of the documentary “Santo Domingo Blues: Los Tigueres de la Bachata,” written and directed by Alex Wolfe.
“We are making efforts to reach a Latino population here in New Jersey, but we also are interested in reaching out to people making independent film,” said Carmen Ramos, the museum’s assistant curator for cultural engagement, and the festival’s principal organizer. “It’s also a reflection of trends that are happening nationwide.”
Ramos said the museum’s annual Black Film Festival is among the oldest in the country for African-American cinema. The 30th annual festival in June included a screening of the 2002 Spike Lee documentary, “Jim Brown: All American,” with a personal appearance by Brown, the NFL Hall of Fame running back who became an actor and activist.
“The Black Film Festival had different goals,” said Ramos. “When it started, it was because black actors and directors and writers couldn’t get their stuff in the theaters, with the film festival business actually being operated as a discovery tool.”
“Now,” Ramos added, “with growth of the Latino market, especially here in this state and in other parts of the country, I think the emphasis is a little different.”
Ramos said the goal of the Latino festival is to engage educators, artists, professionals and the community at large in a creative discussion that might inspire actors, writers, directors and producers of Latino cinema. In other words, the festival seeks to be part of the creative process, rather than simply a distribution aid, she said.
The festival avoids defining Latino cinema, recognizing the complex nature of Latino culture and identity, said Ramos, who was born in the Bronx to parents originally from the Dominican Republic.
The opening feature, “Bought and Sold,” which premiered at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan, exemplifies the Newark festival’s flexibility. For example, Tolajian, the film’s director, is not Latino.
“I’m 100 percent Americanized Armenian,” said Tolajian, who lives in Maplewood.
But the film’s young star, Rafael Sardina, is Puerto Rican, as is his character, Ray-Ray.
“The story itself takes place in Jersey City. There’s an African-American, an Asian, an Armenian,” said Tolajian. “He’s the center point, of course, but it’s kind of how all these racial or ethnic groups interplay in this coming-of-age story.”
Tolajian said he would not label “Bought and Sold” a Latino film himself, but he doesn’t mind if others do.
“I think distributors, they need an audience to get it out there, they need a particular audience,” he said. “If they have to target it to an urban or Latino market, I don’t mind it.”
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