Lights, camera, Ibero American Cinema

Armand Assante, a tribute to late Raul Julia part of the free film fest

NEWHAVEN» The international film festival beginning in the Elm City Tuesday may be the coolest one you’ve never heard of.

The fifth edition of the festival is big enough, at six days, that it’s bringing in more than 20 filmmakers/actors (including well-known actor Armand Assante) for film showings, panels and Q&As. And it’s all free. Gratis.

Featuring shorts, documentaries and scripted films from Spain, Portugal and Latin America, the New England Festival of Ibero American Cinema even has its own cocktail: Local eatery Soul de Cuba Cafe has invented a Passion Fruit Mojito as the official mojito of the festival (and $2 of every drink will be contributed to NEFIAC).

Anyway, you don’t have to eat, drink or speak Spanish to attend, but you should be able to read the requisite subtitles for these eye-opening films. And think a bit about film.

The still-intimate festival encourages interaction with filmmakers at events, and it’s free and open to the public. Opening night at the Arts Hall in ACES Educational Center for the Arts (at Audubon and Orange streets) will begin at 7 p.m. with remarks by Marta Moret, wife of Yale President Peter Salovey, who is also president of a publichealth consulting firm. After that will be a screening of the Cuban film “Behavior,” which tells the story of an 11-year-old boy who cares for his drug-addicted mother by raising pigeons and fighting dogs, and who forms a close bond with a teacher.

“The bureaucracy in the Cuban government is what makes most Cubans crazy,” said festival Director Margherita Tortora, “because everything has to be totally by the book, even if ... it has no common sense to it. So this film is a shout-out against that. It’s an appeal to using common sense in catering education for the student and not according to (rigid) rules.”

Tortora, who went to grade school at St. Bernadette’s School in Morris Cove with former Mayor John DeStefano, former Police Chief William Farrell and this reporter, grew up in a family that spoke Italian and English at home (her father is well-known physician Frank Tortora, a Yaleeducated townie still ambling around New Haven at 101).

Margherita learned Spanish as a kid and (thanks partly to her knowledge of Italian) excelled at it in high school and college; she spent her junior year of college in Spain. She married a man from Puerto Rico whom she met in graduate school in Texas and lived in Puerto Rico for awhile, moving back to New Haven to help care for her aging parents 21 years ago and work at Yale University, where she teaches Spanish.

Tortora, who calls herself a cinephile, said she’s always gone to film festivals and teaches a course on Spanish through American film.

“I wanted to share that with the people of New Haven because I’m from New Haven,” she said when asked why she started the festival. “I’m very dismayed at the racial profiling, at misunderstanding because people just don’t know about each other and don’t know about other cultures. I think it’s basically due to ignorance.”

Tortora said through film and this film fest, “you could get a grasp about so many different cultures ... see what’s being done. In a positive light, (you can) meet filmmakers, actors, producers who are doing excellent work in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries.”

Film-goers learn useful things because Latin American and Iberian films are about what the filmmaker knows, she said, “so their culture and their country is reflected in their films.”

The festival moves to the Whitney Humanities Center (at Wall and Church streets) for Wednesday through Sunday, starting with a tribute to the legacy of Raul Julia 20 years to the week since his death. In what should be a riveting evening, Julia’s widow Merel will attend, as will Assante and actress Julie Carmen. A panel discussion will begin at 6 p.m., followed at 7 by a showing of one of Raul Julia’s finest performances, in “The Penitent” (which was made in English).

(There’s a webpage dedicated to this evening of the festival, at http://juliecarmenactress.com/ thepenitent/).