"Twenty years ago it was absolutely, totally unheard that there was anyone making a film in Chicago - a Latino film," says Pepe Vargas, founder and executive director of the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago (ILCC). Still, that didn't stop 57-year-old Vargas from founding the city's Latino Film Festival. Twenty four years later, the annual 15-day event showcases independent local and international Latino filmmakers before packed crowds.
"The basis for our work is how we can create awareness and educate people about who we are," Vargas says of the ILCC. "And what a better tool than cinema? It transports all of our histories."
Latinos are the largest growing minority in the U.S., with nearly 50 million already living in the country. By 2020, the U.S. Census projects that one in every six Americans will be of Latin American descent. Chicago, with the third-largest Latino population in the nation, has been at the heart of the demographic and cultural explosion. The ILCC has helped capture and encourage that eflouressence.
The center resides on the Columbia College loop campus. It's a pan-Latino, multi-arts facility that presents visual art, dance, music and film from Chicago-area and global Latino artists. Year-round, the Center runs internationally-focused programming that tries to unify the multi-national identities of Latin Americans. A visual arts showcase titled 3 + 3 = 6, which debuted fall 2006 and ran again in 2007, features three female artists and three male artists from different Latin American countries, exhibiting together. The Center's music festivals follow the same, ecclectic theme, with an eye toward representing Latinos internationally. In November 2007 the Center hosted an unprecedented concert, Músicas Latinas, entirely comprised of Latina composed, a rarity for any culture's classical composers.
But the film festival, running each spring, is the Center's gem. Last year, about 30,000 attendees flocked to it the center averages about 50,000 people for all of its events in a year. Vargas finished making the selections for this year's event in January.
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