Latino film festival coming to Northeastern

North­eastern Uni­ver­sity will host the opening recep­tion for the 11th annual Boston Latino Inter­na­tional Film Fes­tival, which runs from Thursday, Oct. 25, to Sunday, Oct. 28. This year marks the first time the fes­tival will open in Boston – it has pre­vi­ously opened in Cam­bridge – and the first year North­eastern will serve as a venue for the event.

“The main reason we hold this fes­tival is to show the com­mu­nity who we are as Latinos,” said fes­tival orga­nizer Jose Augusto Bar­riga, a mar­keting con­sul­tant who is cur­rently pur­suing a master’s degree in reg­u­la­tory affairs at Northeastern.

Noting that Latinos are often maligned by the media, he added, “What we are trying to do it to convey the real­i­ties of this diverse group of people through film.”

North­eastern Pres­i­dent Joseph E. Aoun recorded a greeting that will be played during Thursday’s free opening recep­tion, which will take place at 5:30 p.m. the John D. O’Bryant African-​​American Institute.

“Here at North­eastern, we encourage everyone to embrace a global per­spec­tive,” Aoun said in the video. “The fes­tival and its mis­sion — to bring com­mu­ni­ties together through film — sup­ports the same value we seek to uphold in our uni­ver­sity community.”

The opening recep­tion will be fol­lowed by film screen­ings at 6:45 and 9 p.m. at the African-​​American Insti­tute and in 20 West Vil­lage F on Friday and Sat­urday. Har­vard University’s Tsai Audi­to­rium will screen films on Sat­urday and Sunday.

Sixty films from 17 coun­tries will be screened over the course of the festival’s four-​​day span, which will include guest appear­ances by more than a dozen direc­tors. All of the films will be sub­ti­tled in Eng­lish and none of them have been pre­vi­ously screened in the Boston area.

Tickets to each of the films cost $10, with an all-​​access pass for $80.

Alan West-​​Durán, an asso­ciate pro­fessor in Northeastern’s Depart­ment of Lan­guages, Lit­er­a­tures and Cul­tures and the director of the Latino, Latin Amer­ican and Caribbean Studies Pro­gram, was instru­mental in bringing the fes­tival to the university.

“Every year I’ve gone to the fes­tival, I’ve thought this is some­thing we should bring to North­eastern,” West-​​Durán said. “And finally this year we both got serious about doing it.”

He said the festival’s films would create a dia­logue and bring together people with diverse social and eco­nomic backgrounds.

“It show­cases Northeastern’s com­mit­ment to mul­ti­cul­tur­alism and to reaching out to the Latino com­mu­nity,” West-​​Durán said “It lets us bring that com­mu­nity to campus and have a rela­tion­ship with them, building a frame­work for future col­lab­o­ra­tion and cooperation.”

– by Matt Collette