Film festival and fiesta bring Hispanic culture to Whanganui

Whanganui Hispanic Arts Group Beverly Stuart (left), Marilyn Wilkie, Andrea Gardner and Queralt Scott with Wellington visitors Mariachi Aotearoa. Photo / Supplied

The Latin American and Spanish Film Festival (LASFF) wraps up in Whanganui next week with a final screening at the Davis Theatre.

English subtitled films from Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Argentina and Spain have been screening in Whanganui throughout September.

Whanganui is one of the few regional New Zealand centres to screen the annual festival, largely thanks to the efforts of the Whanganui Hispanic Arts Group (WHAG).

Marilyn Wilkie, Beverly Stuart, Andrea Gardner and Queralt Scott all have Latin connections and they are enthusiastic about "building bridges between New Zealand and our neighbours on the other side of the Pacific", Wilkie said.

LASFF is run by Latin American and Spanish Embassies resident in New Zealand and Australia. WHAG, in conjunction with Whanganui District Council, has been facilitating the festival in Whanganui for six years.

The festival always includes a fiesta and this year it was held at the Whanganui Musicians Club and attended by around 200 people last Saturday.

"We had a fantastic performance from Mariachi Aotearoa, a mariachi band from Wellington," Wilkie said.

"Carlos Navae from Acapulco along with a couple of master Kiwi musicians kept the audience singing and dancing all night and Irina and René of Dance Whanganui were doing the tango, bachata and salsa along with adult and young people's salsa teams."

There will be two LASFF screenings at the Davis Theatre tonight and a final screening on Thursday.

The Path of Shadows (El Camino de las Sombras) is a 2018 dramatised documentary from El Salvador.

"It tells the true story of Carlos Mauricio, a professor of agricultural sciences at the University of San Salvador until his abduction and torture by security forces during the 12-year-long Salvadoran Civil War," Wilkie said.

Salvadoran American producer Justin Mills said he made the film to document a significant era.

"I wanted to create a film so that new generations could learn about what happened during our civil war because knowing the story and preserving historic memory is important."

The other film screening tonight - Ten Days Without Mom (Mama se fue de viaje) - is a comedy from Argentinian director Ariel Winograd.

Wilkie said the lead actor Diego Peretti was voted best actor by a Whanganui audience last year.

"Winograd and Peretti have teamed up again to produce a tender comedy guaranteed to warm your heart and put a smile on your face."

The final LASFF screening on Thursday is Spanish thriller Marshland (La Isla Mínima).

Director Alberto Rodríguez Librero's 2014 film is set in 1980 in a remote and forgotten town in the marshland of the Guadalquivir river.

Two disparate characters (police detectives) must put aside their differences if they are to successfully hunt down a killer who has terrorised the community for years.

All screenings are at the Davis Theatre, Watt St. The Path of Shadows: 5pm, Saturday, September 21; Ten days without mom: 7pm, Saturday, September 21. Marshland: 7pm, Thursday, September 26. Free entry, koha appreciated.