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Alison Stewart: This is All Of IT on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Hispanic Heritage Month kicks off this Friday, as does the New York Latino Film Festival, with a diverse slate representing nearly 20 countries. Listings include a feature titled Sister & Sister from Director Kattia Zúñiga, which follows teenage siblings who travel from Costa Rica to Panama looking for their father.

There's an action-packed thriller from director Manny Pérez about a retired hitman in the Dominican Republic, La Soga 3: Vengeance, and a feature film Story Ave about the relationship between an MTA worker played by Luis Guzmán and a teenage graffiti artist, plus the narrative feature, directorial debut of Oscar winner Roger Ross Williams. The festival kicks off this Friday, September 15th, and ends with an award ceremony and block party on the 24th in Washington Heights, Quisqueya Plaza. Joining us now to talk about this year's program is the festival's founder, Calixto Chinchilla. Calixto, welcome.

Calixto Chinchilla: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: The festival includes 116 films from 20 countries. What does the submission process look like for filmmakers?

Calixto Chinchilla: Well, we start usually around January, at the start of the festival season around Sundance. We have an open call that's until I'd say maybe April. We do visit a couple of festivals, but then everything gets submitted to us. We get submissions from filmmakers from the US, and then the delegates from the different Latin American countries send us their best as well. Between all of that is how we conjure up the slate for the year.

Alison Stewart: What goals did you have for the festival this year?

Calixto Chinchilla: It's always like, you just want to show quality stuff and balanced work, and just new exciting films. You really want it to be a diverse slate. I think with us living in New York, there's every "kind of Latino." We play off of that. That makes our programming really unique, really distinct. I don't think what we do can be duplicated in another city because there's no other city like New York. We take full advantage of that in the programming, and hopefully, that resonates with everybody.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about opening night. Cassandro is screening at the Angelika Film Center on Friday, September 15th, at 8:00 PM. It is a real-life story about an American-born Mexican luchador, a professional wrestler. It's starring Gael García Bernal. People know him from Y tu mamá también, Mozart in the Jungle, recently Station Eleven. What is interesting about this particular professional wrestler story?

Calixto Chinchilla: Cassandro, his real name is, Saúl Armendáriz, and he was the Liberace of wrestling, very flamboyant gowns, and really just putting himself out there in a time where Latinos probably weren't really trying to have that conversation of LGBTQ and coming out and all of that. He liberated himself in playing this character of Cassandro. That duality was like a cover for him. Then, I think in the process of playing this character in the ring, just liberated himself to make amends and come out to his own family. Again, he became liberated in his own backyard, in his own family. It's a touching film, really good picture. This guy is truly a groundbreaker for Latinos and the Luchalibre culture.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a clip from Cassandro. This is Gael García Bernal as playing-- I'm going to mess it up.

Calixto Chinchilla: Armendáriz.

Alison Stewart: Armendáriz, a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso. He's talking to his trainer about what type of wrestler he should be. Let's take a listen.

Armendáriz: Do you think I'm going to be able to do something with [unintelligible 00:04:44]?

Speaker 1: Saul, it's like you're trying to fight [unintelligible 00:04:52] or something, and that's not you. There's a lot of ways you could fight. You don't have to be in the run. You ever thought about being an Exótico?

Armendáriz: No. They don't let Exóticos win, no.

Alison Stewart: Exóticos are our male wrestlers who appropriate female aspects in their wrestling or through costuming and the like. We should know that this film is the feature directorial debut of Roger Ross Williams. He's been a guest on this show for his documentary work. He's an Academy Award winner. What is something you think he does particularly well in this debut?

Calixto Chinchilla: Well, he's committed to this band. Cassandro was actually a documentary first that Roger directed. He turns it into a feature. It's one thing to stay committed to a person and a story-- and if you think this has taken years to get off the ground as far as getting the funding for Cassandro, you can imagine the documentary where you're committing at least five years of your life on a film. I can't speak for him, but I'm pretty sure he's been with Cassandro in his life, probably, maybe, almost 10 years, which is a lot. I think that that's something about Cassandro and his story.

Even in the sound clip that you hear, you can see that duality that Saul is going through, like, "Okay, I can play this and I can do this in this character, but that's not me, but is it me? It is me." You see what I mean? It's just explosive. It is explosive to me. You see that in the film, and we're going to have wrestlers there. We're also going to have some Latino luchadors that do this. One of our luchadors that we're featuring, he's a school teacher, and then he plays a character on the weekends, and he wrestles, and you're throwing your body out, and you do all this, and it's just for entertainment. Also, it's like cosplay, if you will. You get to become somebody bigger, bigger than life, bigger than you. Cassandro's just that. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Let's talk a little bit. There's some documentaries at the New York Latino Film Festival, A Thousand Pines, which follow a crew of 12 Oaxacan tree planters. What do we learn about this back-to-the-land movement of these tree planters?

Calixto Chinchilla: I don't think people know that, we have the conversation of migrants, but there's a lot of people who are in work programs, that come to United States. They do the work, and they leave. This is about that, a crew of Oaxacan tree planners that come to United States, do this work. At the same time, not many people really know about it and the demands of doing this work. Sometimes, those are the unsung heroes, if you will. It's a whole industry. There's companies that pay these people, they bring them in, they come out, some of them get equitable pay, a lot of them don't. It explores that whole thing, if you will, that whole system.

Alison Stewart: I wanted to add one more clip in here. There's another documentary that looks at Carlos Santana's musical career. Let's listen to a little bit of the trailer.

Speaker 2: This battle, this young dude had big eyes and big ears. I said, "Mom, someday I'm going to get you your own house. She goes, that's nice, [unintelligible 00:08:48] ."

Speaker 3: Carlo, he was not around that much.

Speaker 2: I'm in trouble now.

Speaker 3: He was with his friends, rehearsing.

Speaker 2: They said, "Hey, we want to take you to this place." Where are we going? He says it's called the Fillmore.

Speaker 4: I went to the windows and there were these two gentlemen climbing on the side of the building, on the drain pipe, one that said, I play guitar.

Alison Stewart: Calixto, what do we see and what do we learn about Carlos Santana that maybe fans haven't seen before, they don't know?

Calixto Chinchilla: I think it's his first authorized biopic. It's directed by Rudy Valdez, who had directed The Sentence. He actually has another film here at the festival, The Translators, which is a short piece. Really, it's his life, warts and all, and from the very beginning. I think you'll see a different side of him that you haven't seen. He's a little private. I think it's that. It's like how he was born into this business. Since five years old, he learned how to play the violin, and then at eight, he started the guitar. It takes you to all of that. Literally, he was born gifted. It's a pretty impactful piece and he's just a legend. It's a good property, good film.

Alison Stewart: The festival is also screening Stan Lathan's Beat Street from the '80s. How does this film fit into the festival? Why did you pick this one for the retrospective?

Calixto Chinchilla: We have two retrospectives. I mean, we're in New York, we're the home of Hip Hop. Latino and Black people came up with the genre, and so why not? Why wouldn't you? [laughter] Crazy Legs and the Rock Steady Crew here, we're going to have some exclusive Beat Street merch that we're giving away. It's really just to celebrate the anniversary of Hip Hop and Latinos' impact on that.

Another retrospective that we're doing is a film called Blood In Blood Out: Bound By Honor. It's a three-hour epic that came out, that was kind of this unsung film in the '90s. It came out when Boys in the Hood was out and, and stuff like that. Disney quite didn't know what to do with it. It got shelved, but then it had this huge cult following.

Alison Stewart: Now it's--

Calixto Chinchilla: Then it just has a major fan base, which is ridiculous. We're doing a 30th anniversary of that.

Alison Stewart: Where can people go to find more information?

Calixto Chinchilla: At nylatinofilmfestival.com.

Alison Stewart: Calixto Chinchilla, thank you so much. Have a great festival.

Calixto Chinchilla: I appreciate it. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: That is all of it for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time. Zadie Smith will be on the show.

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