The seventh annual edition of the Chicago Latino Film Festival, produced by Chicago Latino Cinema and Columbia College, runs from Friday, September 27, through Sunday, October 6. An opening reception starts at 5:30 tonight at the First Chicago Center Theater, Dearborn and Madison, with a screening of What Happened to Santiago to follow at 7:30; tickets are $25. Film and video screenings after opening night will be held at the Three Penny Cinema, 2424 N. Lincoln; at Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton; at the Chicago Historical Society, Clark at North; at the Instituto del Progreso Latino, 2570 S. Blue Island; and at several libraries. Ticket prices per program are $6 for adults, $4 for students, senior citizens, and handicapped persons, and $3 for Facets and Chicago Latino Cinema members. (Tickets for Chicago Historical Society and video screenings are $3; library screenings are free.) Festival passes, good for all screenings except opening night, are $60, $40 for Facets and Chicago Latino Cinema members. For information call 431-1330.
MARIA ANTONIA Adapted from Eugenio Hernandez’s play, this Cuban feature by Sergio Giral, set in Havana in the 50s, concerns a beautiful and rebellious young woman taken to a high priest by her godmother (1990). (Facets Multimedia Center, 9:00)
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U.S. SHORTS Carlos Avila’s Distant Water (1989), a Peruvian short about a Mexican American boy growing up in Los Angeles in 1943; Severo Perez’s Dreams of Flying (1989), about a young Latina’s efforts to persuade her father to let her attend an out-of-town college on a scholarship; and Georges Nahitchevansky and Helena Pollack Sultan’s Refugees in Our Backyard (1990), an hour-long documentary about recent immigrants to the U.S. from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, narrated by Sigourney Weaver. (Facets Multimedia Center, 3:00)
TOFFEE OR MINT A Chilean feature by Gonzalo Justiniano, who will be present at the screening, about the tenement subculture and criminal street life of Santiago; some of the actors are nonprofessionals (1990). (Three Penny, 7:00)
MARIA ANTONIA See listing under Friday, September 27. (Three Penny, 11:00)
A STORY OF A BILLIARDS TEAM A disenchanted politician in a remote Latin American village invents a new kind of billiards and organizes a team, but can’t hold the team together because of a new entertainment arcade in town. A Soviet-Spanish-Austrian coproduction (1988), directed by Sebastian Alarcon and starring Sergei Gazarov, both of whom will be present at the screening. (Three Penny, 6:00)
TOFFEE OR MINT See listing under Saturday, September 28. (Three Penny, 9:00)
