Short film written and directed by alumni to screen at NewFilmmakers Los Angeles's (NFMLA) Latinx & Hispanic Cinema Festival
The Catch, a short film directed by alumna Thais Drassinower '18 and written by alumna Camila Zavala '19, screened virtually at NewFilmmakers Los Angeles's (NFMLA) Latinx & Hispanic Cinema Festival. NewFilmmakers Los Angeles (NFMLA) and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences teamed up for the annual NFMLA Film Festival InFocus: Latinx & Hispanic Cinema Festival, presented virtually, in collaboration with the streaming platform Seed&Spark. The Catch was streamed as part of the Fictions, Figments, and Fantasies segment on September 26, 2020 with an Audience Q&A that followed.
In The Catch, it’s opening night at the Great Circus of Lima, Peru. As Abril, a trapeze flyer married to her catcher partner André, prepares to jump 46 feet into his arms, the trust between them is unexpectedly threatened. The Film was nominated for Best Student Short at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, and received the Katherina Otto-Bernstein Production Grant and the Bertha Tamayo Grant. The film was also screened at the 2019 Columbia University Film Festival.
New Filmmakers Los Angeles Latinx and Hispanic Cinema Festival 2020 included two shorts programs, and a presentation of Varda Bar-Kar’s documentary Fandango at the Wall, recently acquired by HBO. The fest also featured emerging filmmakers from the US, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Spain, Chile, and the Dominican Republic.
Panelists included Shari Page at Ryan Murphy Television, Luke Rodgers at wiip, Carole Kirschner at the CBS Diversity Writers Program and WGA Showrunner Training Program, Adam Martinez at CBS Television Studios, Axel Caballero at WarnerMedia 150, Ruben Garcia at CAA, Christopher Casanova at Black Bear Pictures, Dave Neustadter at New Line Cinema, Adrian Ward at Banc of California Entertainment Finance, Nicolás Celis at Pimienta Films, AGBO creative and production executives Joey Dizon, Austin Bowman and Josh Williams, and others.
NFMLA Programming Director Bojana Sandic said, “This year’s slate contains a lot of powerful common themes around the powers of family, community, symbolism and imagination as ways of both coping with and understanding the world,” in an article with Deadline. NFMLA Executive Director and Co-Founder Larry Laboe said, “We are grateful to our industry professionals and partners for lending their time and support to this program. It has been amazing working with the Academy to showcase Latinx and Hispanic voices and they’ve really helped to elevate these storytellers.”
The Festival aligns with Hispanic Heritage Month which kicked off September 15 and continues through October 15, and will include Academic delegations of film students from colleges and film schools who rally around emerging, Latinx voices in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. The full list of short films in the festival can be found here.
Drassinower is a Peruvian filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her first short film, Memories of The Sea, was an Official Selection at various international film festivals including Palm Springs Shortfest and Aspen Shortsfest. It was chosen “Best of the Fest” at the New York International Children Film Festival and was taken on tour across America to be showcased in various cities. It is currently part of KQED's Film School Shorts series. Her second short Baby was a semifinalist for the 45th Student Academy Awards, and was awarded the Adrienne Shelly Foundation Award for Best Female Director, and has screened at various international film festivals, winning awards such as the most recent Audience Award at NALIP's Latino Media Fest.
Zavala is a Peruvian producer, writer and actress based in Los Angeles. As a film producer and writer, her films have been selected in various festivals around the world including the Tribeca Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Palm Springs Shortfest and Austin Film Festival. Zavala is a 2020 Sundance Creative Producing Lab Fellow and was a 2019 Film Independent Producing Lab Fellow for the feature film Malpelo, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and selected by Film Independent for their Fast Track Finance Market 2019, Screenwriting Lab and Directing Lab 2020. In addition to her experience in film, Zavala has over ten years’ experience as the Founder of PLAY | Storytelling, a creative production company based in Lima, Peru dedicated to helping brands connect with their consumer through stories.
