By Dennis O’Neil

With the University of Louisville defending its steps taken toward diversity, many programs like the Department of Modern Languages are helping to push forward.

The Latin American Jewish Film Festival took place between Nov. 6 and Nov. 10, with a wealth of interesting and diverse films being shown.

The films were screened in the Chao Auditorium in Ekstrom Library. This festival was a counterpart of the Latin American Film Festival that happened in September and October.

“[The first festival] went great,” said Dr. Manuel Medina, professor of Spanish in the modern languages department and organizer of both festivals.

“About 35 percent of those in attendance were doing it for cultural diversity credit, so it was great to get a new crowd for each showing. There were also various people in the community who came as well, so it went really great,” Medina said.

A second festival was created out of a practical concern that all of the films may not fit into one festival. This festival was designed so that the films would each focus on, or at least contain, some aspect of the Jewish experience in Latin America.

The Lewis Fund, the Modern Languages Fund and the Latin American Studies Program sponsored the festival.

“The films had to talk about the experience of being Jewish in Latin America,” said Medina. “It wasn’t that a specific director was Jewish or a specific actor was Jewish. Secondly, we really wanted to represent [Latin American] countries that have high Jewish populations, so we have films from

Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico.”

For some of the films shown, having a Jewish identity in Latin America plays a central role in the development of the story, such as in “Novia Que Te Vea (May I See You Bride),” a 1994 Mexican drama directed by Guita Schyfter.

The film tells the story of two young Jewish women coming of age in 1960’s

Mexico, and follows them as they deal with attempting to maintain a Jewish identity while still trying to exist in another culture.

On the lighter side of things was the Argentinian comedy “Sammy y Yo (Sammy and I),” a 2002 film directed by Eduardo Milewicz.

The film follows Sammy (Ricardo Darin), an uptight Jewish TV writer whose neuroses have rendered him close to useless. But when Sammy’s idiosyncrasies land him in front of the camera, he suddenly becomes a superstar to millions, much to his own nervous

dismay.

“I really liked the film a lot,” said Clarissa Verguiero, an anthropology student, after the screening of “Sammy Y Yo.”

“I really like the idea of the festival as well because it is interesting to see the Latin and Jewish experiences combined together in films.”

Other films shown included “El Abrazo Partido (Last Embrace),” an Argentinian drama about a young man trying to understand his Jewish ancestry in poverty-stricken Buenos Aires, and “Esperando Al Mesias (Waiting for the Messiah),” which is about a young man attempting to find his way in the business world

of Buenos Aires as well as find his place in the Jewish community.

According to Medina however, it was very difficult to find films that suited the criteria of the festival.

“It wasn’t until about the mid-nineties that [these types of films] started to mingle with the mainstream,” said Medina. “There have been Jewish directors, but not many of them dealt with the experience in Latin America so we had to look very hard for them.”

As far as other film festivals on the horizon go, there are hopes to screen films dealing with the Afro-Hispanic population in Latin America as well as some films dealing with Native Americans and other indigenous populations.

“It’s important to expose students to life outside of Louisville, Ky.,” said Medina. “There have been a lot of younger students who came to the film festival to fulfill a cultural diversity requirement and have told me how glad they were that they came.”