The Milwaukee Film Fest is fully underway and we wanted to grab some popcorn, pull up a seat and hear more about Milwaukee’s own: Cine Sin Fronteras.
It’s been 10 years since Claudia Guzman and Jeanette Martin started the program, with films that explore the Latino diaspora, including stories from the Chicano, Latin American, Indigenous, and Afro-Latinx communities. After a few years, it’s back to being programmed by a Milwaukeean: artist and filmmaker Paula Lovo.
WUWM’s Jimmy Gutierrez spoke with Lovo at the Cine Sin Fronteras kickoff party about what to expect at this year's Film Fest.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
WUWM: What does it mean to be the programmer for Cine Sin Fronteras? And what does that mean for Milwaukee to have a local programmer?
Paula Lovo: I'm really excited to be programming Cine Sin Fronteras because it's a program that I have loved for so long. There were programmers in the community who were just like really showing up for the community. So it felt like big shoes to fill, but honored to try giving my take on it. And I'm somebody who's from Milwaukee, from the south side, who is a filmmaker and thinks a lot about stories. Coming from Latin America, people — also just like how expensive it can be, we're not just the narratives that get repeated often in mainstream media.
You have a beautiful film from last year about Donato, a local paletero, and I want to ask you about film favorites this year, but first: what goes into actually putting the program together? When you think of Afro-Latinx, Mexican Americans, all of the diaspora that goes into Latinx, and beyond – what gets programmed?
Totally. So my jumping point was I really wanted to screen Juan Gabriel’s en Bellas Artes from the 90s and I couldn't find it. So I kind of thought of what was stemming from it, which was joy and culture. And what went into programming was — let's move away from border stories and migration stories — those are really important, and I think you still see that in the film program. But more so like what are the intergenerational relationships that happen in Bolivia, and in a house full of seven women of all different ages, but also queer representation.
If we’re talking about films, can we dig into a few that I have circled to see? First, "Jaripeo."
So jaripeos are really big in Mexico. This film specifically is about this queer artist who grew up in Michoacán and he builds a Mexican rodeo culture. And so it's a documentary, both personal but also capturing queer representation and queer communities that are still in this hyper-masculine setting, because those typically are very hyper-masculine.
The next one I’ve got circled and ready to see, and want people to get excited about, is "The Blue Trail."
So "The Blue Trail" is this film from Brazil and it's in Portuguese, and it's basically about how once elders get to a certain age, they’re sent to these encampment communities. You don't actually really get to see them, because our protagonist said "peace out" and actually runs away and goes on her own adventure. And so it's quite an experience that she takes on. And it’s talking about how society will throw away elders and older folks once they get to a certain age and kind of become outcasts.
The last one I want to ask you about, because I feel like it's super fresh, very bold and very New York, is "Mad Bills to Pay."
So "Mad Bills to Pay" or "Destiny, dile quo no soy malo" is a coming-of-age story, coming from New York but of Dominican descent and our protagonist is 19. They get their 16-year-old girlfriend pregnant. And so it's like them navigating adulthood when they're not actually adults yet, but also him trying to reckon with what fatherhood means and looks like to him when he didn't have a father and has mad bills to pay. And what's really cool is the director used nontraditional actors. So for many of the actors in this film, this is their first time acting. And you feel that personality coming through.
I want to circle back because for a long time Cine Sin Fronteras was not programmed by anyone local, and it felt like there was a distance between what we were getting and our Milwaukee artistic stamp. And the history of Cine is that it was started by two local people and there was a lot of fallout between them and MKE Film. There was community fallout that happened because of that. So what’s the importance of having this locally-sourced and kind of rebuilding community trust?
I have so much admiration and and gratitude to Claudia and Jeanette for so long programming events that were really essential in the community. Like, I was under 21 when they were here, but trying to pop into these spaces when the film festival was during my birthday — that's how I would spend my birthday, by bringing my family to the movies.
So I feel really honored that I'm somebody from the community, and you always want to put the community forward, and knowing that, yeah, the south side is very Mexican, but also there's so many more identities. I mean, I'm also Nicaraguense. We have a lot of Central American communities here, too. We got Boricua communities. And I hope that the community enjoys it. I hope it feels explorative and something that you can go back home and talk to your community, your family and your homies about.
You can find Film Fest showtimes here. Milwaukee Film is a financial supporter of WUWM.
