Cine
Formerly a client, Isaac now volunteers in the kitchen.
What put Terrance Keith Isaac out on the streets? Isaac: “Bad luck and chi ld support.”
What took him off ? “A lot of people got behind me wanting to help me do it,” he says. “It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. And I was beyond ready. ... It was a golden opportunity. People offered me resources, but I had to do all the shoe leather.”
Isaac, 50, found a helping community at the Trinity Center, a project of St. David’s Episcopal Church on Trinity and East Seventh streets. Nowadays, with a job and an apar tment that he shares with his girlfriend, the Michigan native gives back by working in the center’s kitchen.
On April 29, the center holds its annual Barbara Jordan Celebration and Cocktail Hour in St. David’s Bethell Hall, honoring volunteer organizer Caroline Kibler with the Pat Hazel Award.
Isaac, the oldest of nine half-brothers and half-sisters, needed a lifeline such as the Trinity Center. He says his mother, a heroin addict who abused alcohol, was murdered in Detroit by her pimp-dealer. His father was a womanizer who moved to
happens to the lead actor, but they find themselves in over their heads when they hire a hit man. “The Martini Shot,” a D Street Films production, is directed by Demetrius Navarro and written by Enrico Natale.
“Part of the mission in opening with a U.S. film almost entirely in English is to say that Latinos, in a broad sense, and indigenous peoples of the Americas, have other voices besides in Spanish,” Lauer says. Cine Las Americas films in foreign languages all have English subtitles.
Austin-based filmmaker Nicole Elmer says that because people repeatedly question her identity, she often thinks about what it means to be a Latina in film. Her experimental, mostly Austin-shot movie “What’s the Use?” will have its festival premiere under the signature Hecho en Tejas program, which showcases Texas-based films. “What’s the Use?” explores a teenage girl’s journey as she’s called to take action and save her father’s life. Pushing the cinematic envelope, Elmer uses bold visuals including public domain footage and text animation for an avant-garde approach.
Elmer, who has Mex- ican, French, German and Irish roots, says finding her place wasn’t always easy growing up. She recalls an Austin college professor asking her once, “Are you really Hispanic?”
“How do you answer that question, and how do you put that in a film?” Elmer, 40, says. “What’s the Use?” features Latina and Latino characters, but is not a film examining identity. Instead, Elmer focuses on human drama to connect audiences. “Human stories are human stories,” she says.
Cine Las Americas this year has partnered for the first time with the popular international documentary festival, Ambulante. Co-founded by Mexican actors Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, among others, Ambulante tours Mexico and promotes documentaries as tools for social and cultural transformation. Cine Las Americas will co-present a special series of three documentary films at 8 p.m. April 23-25 at the Jones Auditorium at St. Edward’s University, where special guest Christine Davila, director of Ambulante California, will be present.
Festgoers can also expect to see a more diverse lineup in the festival’s youth component, Emergencia. While Cine Las Americas has struggled in the past to reach into other countries with their call for Emergencia entries, Lauer says, this year they will showcase films from as far away as Bolivia. “There’s youth making exciting stuff, and hopefully they’re future media makers or know that they could be if they wanted to,” Lauer says. The Emergencia youth film competition screenings are free starting at 11 a.m. at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center on April 25.
It’s been a year of tran- sition for Cine Las Americas as they move forward housed in a new location at the Austin Studios Armory Building and without an executive director. Its board of directors runs operations for now, and planning the festival has been a team effort, Lauer says.
“We all need each other, from donors and members to the filmmakers who trust us with their films,” she says. “Whatever (Cine) evolves into in the future, I hope that it’s all of us working together to make Cine what we want it to be.”