By Pilar Dirickson Garrett
For over seventeen years and fifteen editions, Latin Wave: New Films from Latin America has provided residents of Houston, Texas with a unique opportunity to engage with Latin American films and filmmakers in their own city, bringing the best and brightest works from the region to the pioneering Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH).
On the occasion of the festival’s fifteenth anniversary, Cinema Tropical is pleased to spotlight the history of this special program by looking back at its past decade and half, from its genesis as an experimental program in the early 2000s to its current status as one of the country’s most preeminent platforms for the amplification of contemporary Latin American film and its makers. In detailing this history, we hope to celebrate the contributions that both the MFAH and Fundación PROA have made in helping to increase the visibility of Latin American cinema and visual art in the United States over the last two decades.
Founded in 2006 as a joint venture between Fundación PROA—a Buenos Aires-based private contemporary art center sponsored by the global steel manufacturer Tenaris—and the MFAH, Latin Wave first came to fruition as a natural extension of the Museum’s longstanding curatorial commitment to presenting cinema as an art form, its growing institutional attention to art from Latin America, and Fundación PROA’s independently-burgeoning interest in supporting Latin American cinema via cross-cultural and cross-institutional exchange.
Although the Museum’s Department of Film—led by Curator of Film, Marian Luntz—had long programmed its screening calendar with attention to international cinema, it was only once the highly-regarded art institution established its dedicated Department of Latin American Art under Wortham Curator of Latin American Art Mari Carmen Ramírez and its affiliated research institute, the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), in 2001 that conversations organically evolved to consider how the MFAH might better amplify and support works by Latin American directors in order to celebrate Houston’s own diverse, multicultural community.
Lfatin Wave 9 (rom left to right): Producer Margarita De La Vega Hurtado (Requiem NN); director Claudia Sainte Luce (The Amazing Catfish); director Victoria Galardi (I Thought It Was a Party); :Latin Wave programmer Diana Sánchez; director Neto Villalobos (Por las plumas); and Guillermo Goldschmidt, Director of Projects, Fundación PROA. May 2014. Photo courtesy of MFAH.
An arranged meeting between Fundación PROA’s Director of Projects Guillermo Goldschmidt and the MFAH got the ball rolling as Fundación PROA was also looking for an opportunity to help develop a program committed to uplifting Latin American cinema in the United States, primarily as a counterpart to their existing program focused on regional histories of photography and the development of historical photo libraries as part of a project specifically developed for Tenaris globally in the communities where the industry is based. For Fundación PROA, the opportunity to work with the MFAH enabled them to delve into contemporary moving image and, in particular, new Latin American cinema, right as the Latin American independent film boom was emerging.
This early collaboration has now turned into a long-lasting relationship, with Fundación PROA supporting all subsequent iterations of the festival since its first edition in 2006. Latin Wave was also the Foundation’s first international test program, alongside their festival in Monterrey, Mexico, that has now become the flagship program in a long roster of international festivals, community partnerships, and screening series that the Foundation currently puts on in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Romania, Brazil, Uruguay, and Italy, in addition to the United States.
“Latin Wave has become an established and popular annual event in Houston that holds an important spot within the Museum’s year-round film programming,” says curator Marian Luntz. “The creative collaboration with Fundación PROA opens up the programming as we can take advantage of filmmakers and films that they suggest that may not have yet generated buzz beyond Latin America. This allows us to celebrate a sense of discovery that each edition brings, and which the audiences always appreciate.”
“For us at Fundación PROA, the ongoing partnership that we have with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is incredibly important for the work that it does in showcasing the best that Latin America has to offer in creativity, modernity, emotionality, and vitality of the arts,” says Director of Projects Guillermo Goldschmidt. “We are very proud of keeping this program running in the long term because it closely reflects our own philosophy of how cultural programs must be supported: as with industrial projects led by our sponsor Tenaris, cultural projects develop strength and gain confidence when they are supported for the long term.”
Latin Wave 5 (from left to right): Director Óscar Ruiz Nava (Crab Trap); Latin Wave programmer Monika Wagenberg; and director Pedro González Rubio (Alamar). April 2010. Photo courtesy of MFAH.
Since its inception, the festival has employed a revolving set of film professionals recognized as leaders in the field of Latin American cinema to act as Artistic Directors, beginning with Cinema Tropical’s co-founder Monika Wagenberg in 2006. After serving in the role for seven years, Monika passed on the position to Diana Sánchez, former Senior Director of Film at the Toronto International Film Festival, who subsequently served through 2019.
Cinema Tropical’s co-founding Executive Director Carlos A. Gutierrez was recently appointed the festival’s new Artistic Director, making Latin Wave 15 his first year in the role. This strategy, actively promoted by both the MFAH and Fundación PROA, ensures that the festival incorporates novel perspectives into their annual programming while also amplifying the work of different leaders independently making strides in the industry.
For the past fifteen editions, MFAH and Fundación PROA have maintained a commitment through Latin Wave to supporting emerging filmmakers at the forefront of Latin American cinema as well as film critics, scholars, and industry professionals likewise dedicated to increasing the visibility of Latin American cinema in the United States. Over the years, Latin Wave has championed the works of directors now recognized as part of the vanguard of New Latin American Cinema and contemporary Latin American cinema in general, with selections ranging from works by João Moreira Salles, Natalia Almada, Carlos Reygadas, Mariana Rondón, Lucrecia Martel, Mariano Llinás, Karim Ainouz, and Pablo Larraín, among many others.
The festival has also played repeat-host to several of the above directors, supporting their careers’ development over time as was done with Rodrigo Plá’s The Delay and Mariana Rondón’s Bad Hair, both having been selected for Latin Wave 7 after their first selections in Latin Wave 3. A particular high point of the festival’s past decade and a half, in addition to welcoming such an illustrious cast of young and established filmmakers to the Museum, was having Geraldine Chaplin attend the opening of the 10th edition in support of Dominican-based filmmakers Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán’s Sand Dollars, in which Chaplin starred alongside Dominican actress Yanet Mojica.
Latin Wave 3: Directors Anahí Berneri (Encarnación) and César Troncoso (The Pope’s Toilet). May 2008. Photo courtesy of MFAH.
After a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year's program runs April 21-24 and is curated in collaboration with Cinema Tropical. Always careful to present a wide-ranging selection of films from across the region, this year’s program includes critically-acclaimed works of documentary, fiction, and animation from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, and Venezuela, each addressing and engaging with diverse aspects of Latin American life, culture, and politics.
Latin Wave 15 features such festival standouts as Dos Estaciones by Mexican director Juan Pablo González, Clara Sola by Costa Rican-Swedish debut director Nathalie Álvarez Mesén, and Comala by Mexican director Gian Cassini. The majority of the films that the festival selects are not readily available on mainstream streaming platforms or VOD, making their inclusion in Latin Wave all the more important as a vital opportunity for Houston audiences to see these films outside of the International film festival circuit.
“We want to continue celebrating the experience of watching a film on screen, seeing films with audiences, and having that palpable emotional experience which is so essential to what we’re doing with Latin Wave,” says Luntz. This year’s audience will have the added bonus of being able to watch select screenings in the Museum’s recently-inaugurated Lynn Wyatt Theater, a new, 215-seat space in the MFAH’s Nancy and Rich Kinder Building dedicated to furthering the prestigious institution’s commitment to arthouse and independent film.
For more information on the complete lineup for Latin Wave 15, and previous editions, please visit www.mfah.org/latinwave.
Special thanks to Ray Gomez and Tracy Stephenson.
