Latino Themed Movies Take the Spotlight at Sundance Film Festival: Mosquita y Mari (Video)

It is undeniable that Latino voices are largely underrepresented and/or distressingly clichéd through the current perspective of American media, therefore it is rare that a filmmaker like Guerrero has the opportunity to share her voice through moviemaking, and perhaps more profound is that her voice is getting the recognition it deserves.
Sundance Institute strives to serve as the premiere forum for unique voices in independent film: “[A] discovery festival that is committed to representing the wide spectrum of independent cinematic work being made today.” The Institute’s featured event, the Sundance Film Festival, opens today in Park City, Utah, to an expected snow flurry of celebrities, filmmakers, filmgoers, industry professionals and more.Mosquita y Mari is Latina director Aurora Guerrero‘s first feature film and it will premiere in the “Next” category of the Sundance Film Festival 2012, a non-competitive program the festival defines as “films [that] stretch limited resources to create impactful art.” Guerrero’s acceptance to the festival is an accomplishment; of the nearly 12,000 films submitted to the festival this year, less than 2% were accepted.
This won’t be Guerrero‘s first time walking the Sundance red carpet; her short film Pura Lengua screened at Park City in 2005, and the filmmaker was accordingly snatched up by the prestigious Sundance Institute to participate in the Sundance Native/Indigenous Lab. Mosquita y Mari soon thereafter earned the Sundance/Ford Fellowship and the Sundance Institute/Time Warner Foundation Fellowship for Post Production.
In addition to receiving the abundant support of the Sundance, Mosquita y Mari has garnered the attention of prestigious film organizations including the Tribeca All Access Filmmaker Program, Film Independent’s Producers Lab, the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP) Latino Media Market, and the film project was the recipient of the Paul Robeson Development Grant, the SFFS/KRF Grant and the LG Cinema 3D Fellowship. The film was recently a Nominee for the Film Independent Piaget Producers Award for the work of the film’s producer Chad Burris.
The film Mosquita y Mari explores the complexities of a budding friendship between two Chicana high schoolers in Los Angeles’ Huntington Park as they struggle to recognize the sexual undercurrent in their relationship. The film stars rising teen talents Fenessa Pineda and Venecia Troncoso, and features supporting talent Joaquín Garrido, Laura Patalano and Dulce Maria Solis. The film was intimately photographed by Uruguayan cinematographer Magela Crosignani and both creatively and culturally designed by Production Designer Dalila Paola Mendez. The film was edited by Augie Robles and scored by composer Ryan Beveridge.

Reed more

Related links: Mosquita y Mari Blog

Source: by S.J. Main for the Huffington Post