EC talks with Lisa Franek, Curator of the San Diego Latino Film Festival
March 11th, 2010 by Scott Marks
While it may not be our town’s longest running film festival (that honor goes to the Jewish Film Festival), the San Diego Latino Film Festival (SDLFF) is easily the most ambitious.
Included in the 185 shorts and features to be screened at the 17th annual fest are programs dedicated to animation, gay cinema, women directors, documentaries and experimental shorts harvested from media centers and schools throughout the country.
But the movies don’t stop with the eleven-day festival, which runs from March 11-21 at UltraStar Mission Valley Cinemas at Hazard Center. Throughout the year the Media Arts Center, the nonprofit parent company of SDLFF, holds special screenings. They include fall’s Cinema en tu Idioma series that features workshops, parties and celebrity meet-and-greets in addition to six movies.
The festival’s curator is Lisa Franek, who works closely with founder/executive director Ethan van Thillo.
Franek, a 34-year-old Colorado native, moved to San Diego to attend grad school at SDSU, where she received a master’s degree in film. Before joining the festival three years ago, she taught classes at San Diego State, City College and Platt College.
Though busy with the Latino Fest, Franek didn’t sound the least bit frantic during a recent interview.
Scott Marks: What is it about movies that caught your attention in the first place?
Lisa Franek: I started out as an undergrad in music and I also studied dance and theater. Movies are really the only art form where you get to combine all the other art forms. Once you hear a movie camera and the film running through it, it’s magical to the point where it becomes an addiction. I love movies.
How did you get your job as festival curator?
I started out by volunteering and they called me and said, “Hey, you weren’t bad. Why don’t you come back and help us out some more?”
How many movies did you watch in order to whittle it down to 185 selections?
This year it was over 600.
That includes features and shorts?
Yes.
Do you remember the first film you ever saw?
In my life?
Yes.
(Laughing) No. I do remember my very first favorite film when I was a kid and that was “The Black Stallion.” It remains one of my favorites to this day.
Do you have an all-time favorite movie?
Wow, that’s a tough one. It kind of changes.
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San Diego Jewish Film Festival offers 51 movies from 14 countries
February 6th, 2010 by Scott Marks
“A Matter of Size” is one of the hefty offerings at the San Diego Jewish Film Festival. (Photo courtesy of Menemsha Films)
San Diego’s longest-running film festival turns 20 this year. And what better way to celebrate than by showing more movies than ever before?
Slated for February 10-21, the San Diego Jewish Film Festival (SDJFF) promises films from 14 different countries. The combined number of shorts, documentaries and features totals an impressive 51.
“We started with four films,” Joyce Axelrod, the fest’s founder and former chairperson, laughingly recalls. “Even after the festival was well underway (co-founder) Lynette Allen and I never showed more than twenty or thirty films.”
It began as a modest series of film screenings held in a gymnasium and curated by Axelrod and Allen. At the time, there were only a handful of Jewish film festivals sprinkled across the country. If Axelrod’s tabulations are correct, there are currently 81 Jewish festivals in the U.S. and 130 worldwide.
San Diego’s fest found an early home at La Jolla’s Sherwood Auditorium in the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. For the past several years, SDJFF’s flagship theater has been the AMC La Jolla 12.
This year’s venues also include the UltraStar Mission Valley Cinemas at Hazard Center and UltraStar Poway Creekside Plaza 10, the David & Dorothea Garfield Theatre at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, and on the campus of San Diego State University at the “Not Quite Kosher Film Festival.”
For 13 years, running the festival was Axelrod’s all-consuming passion. Seven years ago, she handed the reigns over to Judy Friedel, who now acts as festival chairperson. Joyce still maintains a spot on the festival lineup. The Joyce Forum has become one of SDJFF’s most popular components.
It began as a birthday gift from her husband, Joe Fish.
Joyce Axelrod
“Joe made a gift to the Center for Jewish Culture, “Axelrod remembers. “He and (former festival director) Jacqueline Siegel knew of my interest in emerging filmmakers. They decided to establish the Joyce Forum, a festival-within-the-festival to show films created by budding talent. It was also a way for the industry to recognize them as up-and-coming filmmakers.”
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