The International Latino Cultural Center, which produces the Chicago Latino Film Festival, has partnered with Comcast to launch the Chicago Latino Filmmaker Program.
Last Friday, Comcast on Demand began carrying four-to-five-minute sample reels from six local filmmakers, all of them veterans of the festival and chosen by a selection committee of ILCC staff and board members.
“This partnership with Comcast allows us to take viewership to the next level and that unprecedented kind of exposure is extremely important to filmmakers who otherwise would have to take their films door-to-door,” says festival founder and executive director Pepe Vargas.
The six selected filmmakers’ work is featured in the “Get Local” section for Comcast Digital Cable subscribers. Next January, the selection committee will choose another six filmmakers for the second round of the program.
Spokesperson Brenda Salas Varney says prospective filmmakers need not have been featured in the CLFF, “the only requirement is that the films are complete,” and “the content does not necessarily have to be Latino.”
