Boho Big Screen Lowers in Montezuma

By Britton Jacob-Schram

It’s a pair of incomprehensible soul mates stricken with cerebral palsy, a “dogumentary” covering the obsessive nature of California wiener dog races, the United States’ inveterate abuse of Latin America, and the outsourcing of love at this year’s Montezuma International Film Festival.

The free festival, now in its second year running, will be showcasing full-length features and a myriad of short films at four different venues, all nestled in the bohemian town known for its laid-back air.

Fire dancers, art gallery openings, waterfalls at a walk’s length, and after parties at the local beachside bar will also be keeping festival-goers amused, says the Festival’s Director, Atlanta-based Eric Panter.

© Britton Jacob-Schram

“This year we had the privilege of getting a lot of submissions in Spanish, with English subtitles. We were really thrilled about that. Of course, because we definitely want everyone to be interested — both locals and tourists.”

The feature-lengths on this year’s register, he says, were hand-picked from about 500 entries, adding many boldly address injustices throughout Latin America.

“We received tons of films from Spain, Argentina, all over Mexico, down to Bolivia — many are documentaries dealing with the hardships the people in these countries are facing,” he said of films like Opposite Land, which attacks the destabilizations and “chicanery” of US big-wigs upon Latin American resources.

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Opposite Land’s director, J. Michael Seyfert, is a repeat participant in the festival, notes Panter, who added Seyfert’s last film Rent-A-Rasta, addressing the Jamaican sex tourism industry and the 80,000 middle-aged women who annually head to Jamaica looking for their “big bamboo”, was a giant success.

Another of the festival’s features, Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad, documents the recent unrest in Oaxaca, Mexico when citizens overtook the media — an uprising some call “the first Latin American revolution of the 21st century”.

And then there’s Cuba-Libre (pictured), says Panter, which follows the riotous adventures of a group of squatters who, when evicted from their cultural center, head to Madrid’s Cuban Embassy — just in time for Castro to announce free elections. The film received honors of Best Feature and Best Foreign Film at Ireland’s 2007 Waterford Festival and this year’s Atlanta Underground Film Festival, respectively.

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“A lot of the films are just getting out there and it’s not anything people are going to see until they’re picked up later,” he said, adding a few Costa Rican-produced short films will be shown, including a short shot in Guanacaste, called The 400-meter Dash.

Other features like Wiener Takes All and Sex Galaxy — likened to a weird pastiche of old stock sci-fi flicks cobblestoned together into a coherent plot — may not have been snatched up for the big screen just yet, but they’re sure to swell into cult hits.

Other favorites for the festival director this year were Love Limits, a painfully brilliant love story documenting the relationship of two people afflicted with cerebral palsy, a pair who Panter says are “on a level no one else can comprehend”.

© Beach Times Files

For someone who’s never been, it’s a sentiment akin to the festival itself.

For more information, see the festival website: montezumafilmfestival.com