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The nation’s longest running Latino-centric film festival returns to San Antonio next week.
The 46th CineFestival is July 9-13. It was founded by San Antonio filmmaker and chef Adan Medrano in the 1970s as a Chicano Film Festival, and it has since been through many incarnations.
Eugenio del Bosque has been program director of the festival since 2020.
We spoke to him along with the directors of two of the feature films that will receive their premieres at CineFestival.
Adrian Arredondo is co-director of Take It Away, a documentary about legendary TV host Johnny Canales, whose Johnny Canales Show launched the careers of Tejano superstar Selena and other major artists.
We’re also talking to Anayansi Prado, director of Uvalde Mom, a film that tells the complicated story of the single mom who ran into Robb Elementary School to save her children during the mass shooting that claimed 21 lives.
Eugenio del Bosque begins with an overview of the nearly 100 films being screened over five days.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Del Bosque: So, we have, of course, some estrenos, some new releases that are being shown in San Antonio, most of them for the first time. I think probably one or two have had screenings in town. But these include larger feature films.
The vast majority of them have a Texas connection. The films that we're going to talk about a little bit later, Take It Away and Uvalde Mom, of course, have a strong Texas connection, along with the Selena y Los Dinos documentary. There are a couple of Mexican feature films.
During my time as programmer, I've tried to make that connection with Mexican films that resonate with Latino and Chicano culture and Mexican American culture here in San Antonio. This is not an attempt to sideline any other Latin American films, but we have so little time to put a festival together — anywhere from three to five days a year. So, in trying to curate a program that makes sense as a whole, this year, we have a couple of feature films: One is Carnalismo, which comes from Durango, Mexico. It’s not a mainstream film from the cities or from the main production hubs in Mexico. And the other one is Valentina or the Serenity, which is actually an indigenous film by Ángeles Cruz — again, not from the mainstream production streamlines in Mexico City. It’s from Oaxaca.
And then the rest of the lineup ... we do have a little bit of comedy, which I'm always looking for. The Place In Between is a film largely shot in San Antonio. Everybody in the cast and crew are women filmmakers, women artists, so they'll be joining us as well. And then a few other feature films and documentaries. The rest of the program is a lot of short films.
So, we have a handful of films that are in competition for best short film made in Texas. And then we have showcases devoted to San Antonio filmmakers, which I think we have four showcases. It's quite a bit of material. We have showcases dedicated to Texas short films and the always great youth films, which are young artists, 18 years old or younger.
Martinez: Well, one of the feature films that is going to be debuted at this festival is one that already has a bit of buzz. And we're talking to Adrian Arredondo, co-director and co-producer of Take It Away. Adrian, what was it that compelled you to tell the story of Johnny Canales, and how, with all the material that you were presented, how did you put it together into this film, Take It Away?
Arredondo: Absolutely. We were really inspired to create Take It Away because we could not believe that this was a story that had not already been told.
Johnny Canales is not only a Texas icon. He is a bridge to so many cultures, and he really opened the door to not only Latinos, but to people from Texas that could sometimes not feel like they were accepted by society at large.
And Johnny was a really confident person who used his creativity, really, to put Mexican Americans, migrants and Latinos on television, on the radio, and he was a star maker. I think a lot of people know Johnny Canales for introducing Selena to the world, but over the five years that we spent making this film, we learned that Johnny really created so many superstars. And not only that, he created a community, and he created a culture that made so many people feel comfortable to be themselves, including me.
I grew up in McAllen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley. My family now lives in San Antonio, and I have lived outside of Texas for the last 15 years as a filmmaker across New York, Los Angeles. And I always just kind of went back to my roots. And thinking of the stories that I want to tell, it just went to a very real place, and I wanted to tell the story of an icon that is from my region of the world, South Texas.
And it's been really amazing to see the community that has been missing a show like Johnny Canales, that has been missing that space where they feel celebrated, they feel seen, they feel heard, they feel beautiful. And so, our movie really encompasses that spirit, and we just wanted to bring Johnny back.
Martinez: Was the film partly sparked by his recent death, or did it just happen to come while you were working on the film?
Arredondo: So, Johnny's death was unexpected to us, and we actually had already finished the movie prior to his passing. And after he passed away, we got a call, essentially that day from the Canales family, and they were telling us the news because we had — sure we made a movie, but we also had to become really close friends through just years of filming. And we decided to go back to the Valley. We reopened the edit. We shot both funerals, because he had a private funeral and a public funeral at Selena Auditorium in Corpus Christi.
Over the course of the next two months, we re-edited our entire third act of the film to really close that chapter of Johnny's life.
We talk about Johnny's early life, his mid-career, his late career, and ultimately his death. But it really is quite a poetic ending, and I'm really glad that we made the decision to reopen the edit and include his passing, because somehow it feels very appropriate, but it was not a part of our plan.
Martinez: Well, Anayansi, we're staying in South Texas for the film that you will be screening at CineFestival, and it's one that … people may have memories of when they saw the news of the Uvalde school shooting, that they heard that there was a woman who ran into the school — despite all the police who were there trying to keep everybody out — that she ran in and she grabbed her kids and took them away. Maybe people thought it was an urban legend, but it truly was a woman who went through the police barricades to go grab her children, and you were telling her story in Uvalde Mom. Can you tell us a little bit about what inspired you to tell her story?
Prado: Yeah. I mean, I think, like many of us around the country and even around the world, I was very moved when I heard about what happened in Uvalde, and just how it was such a terrible tragedy. And I started to look for stories of people in Uvalde and I came across Angeli. And it just so worked out that I got to tell her story.
I think part of [what] was really interesting to me, it wasn't just her story of what happened that day, but also her past and her previous involvement with the criminal justice system and just ways in which the systems had failed her. I thought there was a parallel in that with the way the systems failed the town the day of the shooting.
I just thought it was a really interesting vehicle to tell both stories: one of a woman growing up in Uvalde, and then one of just what happened to the town that day.
Martinez: You yourself, you're not from Texas, so you were coming into this a little bit as an outsider. So, I'm curious as to what you may have learned about this community that you didn't know prior going in?
Prado: Yeah. I have done films about towns in the border, and most of my films, or all of my films, focus on the Latino community of working class or just rural communities. And so, in that sense, I felt a connection. And at the same time, I was, like you mentioned, very much aware that I was an outsider. So, one of the things that I committed to was to hire 100% Texas crew. So, my crew, from my director of photography to production assistant, were entirely … lived in Texas, many born in Texas.
And I also wanted to make it a priority to hire Mexican Americans because Uvalde is a predominantly Mexican American town, for the reasons that you mentioned because as an outsider, I wanted to have some sort of guidance from my crew about the nuances. And it's really interesting — when I was making the film, people often thought that people in Uvalde spoke Spanish, for example, and that that was the primary language. And I'm like, “No, they've been there for five, six generations. This is a Mexican American community with roots there.”
But despite that, I got to learn — which the film explores — the history of repression towards the Mexican American community, and although they're the majority, how there is a minority that sort of calls the shots and controls a lot of the town, and how Mexican Americans before the shooting often felt neglected and intimidated to speak up. But the shooting really changed that, and people felt fed up and began to speak against systems that have been failing them for decades.
Martinez: Well, I know that Uvalde Mom will be the major feature film that will be kicking off the festival on July 9. Take It Away will be one of the closing films for the finale of the festival on July 13. Eugenio, can you tell us a little bit about where the screenings will be taking place and how people might be able to reserve their tickets?
Del Bosque: Of course. The screenings will take place at the Jo Long Theater and the Little Carver Civic Center, both of which are part of the Carver Community Cultural Center. And then we also have screenings at the Santikos Mayan Palace. And we do have one show — the youth films are going to be showing in partnership with Say Sí, they're showing at their campus in on the West Side. All the information for the festival can be found at the Guadalupe cultural arts website: guadalupeculturalarts.org/cine-festival. That will take you to everywhere you need to be online to see the lineup to buy tickets.
And you can also go to the box office at the Jo Long Theater and buy tickets in person, and I recommend doing that. Everything at the Little Carver is free. So that's a good 60-65% of the festival is free. You still need a ticket. You don't need a pass or anything. You just go online and reserve a ticket. We just want to know you're coming, and we have a place for you to sit.
But yeah, a lot of what we are going to be screening is free to the public to just come and join. And these are films that will most likely not show again in San Antonio. And a lot of people ask us, when can I find this online? And a lot of it is, unfortunately, not, at least immediately available online. So, this is a great opportunity.
Martinez: Adrian Arredondo, Anayansi Prado, Eugenio del Bosque, thanks so much for giving us a preview of CineFestival.
Del Bosque: Thank you.
Arredondo: Thank you so much.
Prado: Yeah, thanks for having us.
