The LatinX LGBTQ Film Festival at Maya Cinemas is not just entertainment. It’s outreach, it’s affirmation, it’s an embrace of a marginalized and vulnerable community that’s in such risk that the Monterey County Health Department is a festival sponsor.
According to Elizabeth Ambriz, prevention and early intervention coordinator at the Health Department, LGBTQ people experience higher rates of bullying, depression and suicide.
Last year, the inaugural, they showed one film: El Canto del Colibri by Mexican director and LGBT and HIV/AIDS activist Marco Castro-Bojorquez. “It was fantastic,” says Lisa Cisneros, of co-sponsor California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. “We were in a theater that could seat 400 and we had to turn people away. We realized there was a real appetite for these types of films.” So this time there are six films over two days, with speakers and panels to boost insight.
Director Castro-Bojorquez is returning – and speaking – behind another film, Tres Gotas de Agua (screening 6:30pm Friday), a short piece about three Mexican mothers who have immigrated to the U.S. and, in addition to dealing with all that entails, have a son or daughter who has come out as gay. Mosquita y Mari (6:30pm Friday) looks like a millennial-aged remake of a Gus Vant Sant love story, re-cast with two young Latina actresses. Raising Zoey (3:30pm Saturday) is a documentary about a 13-year-old transgender girl, Zoey. “When I had to present as a boy, it was horrible,” Zoey says. “I was dying inside.”
Her mom says that she blossomed once allowed to be a girl, but that freedom comes at a cost. Her father disapproved and died before she could earn his acceptance, her brother won’t appear on camera with the family, her school asked her to leave. But that tough stuff is seemingly tempered by the love and acceptance of her mother, family and friends.
Monterey County trends more positive and accepting, Cisneros says. “I think often people feel a lot of support,” she says. “Some families, friends and co-workers struggle with the stigma.”
On Saturday there will be two panels (12:30pm and 3:30pm) populated with local LGBT folks and their families to talk through and expound on the issues. And the issues are profoundly human.
“All I want to do,” says Zoey, “is dress the way I am, be addressed as ‘she’ and ‘her,’ and I want to have a name.”
That doesn’t seem so much to ask.
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