By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter
SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – Despite Brazil’s current economic crisis, Mix Brasil Festival of Diversity Culture reaches its 24th edition this year ‘with business as usual’. The festival considered the largest LGBTQ festival in Latin America will run from November 9 through 20 featuring 114 films from 26 countries.
“We celebrate a new record of entries and the exuberance of domestic production, represented in more than 50 full-version and short films from around the country,” stated a press release by director and curator of the festival, John Federici.
According to Federici, the international line up will include award-winning films exhibited in major festivals such as Locarno, Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, Toronto and Venice.
This year the MixLab will promote meetings between young Brazilian filmmakers and established foreign filmmakers through presentation of films, lectures, debates and courses.
According to Federici, the crisis was surpassed with “a lot of creativity” by festival organizers and will not be felt by the public, who will have an ample array of films, music, theater, and dance presentations as well as several conferences to choose from.
The traditional show of Gong, led by actress Marisa Orth also will not be left out and will take place on November 15th, starting at 8:30PM at the Centro Cultural São Paulo.
Children will be able to attend a workshop called ‘Making Movies – Growing with diversity’, coordinated by Christian Saghaard.
The LGBTQ festival this year pays tribute to Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues, whose film O Ornitólogo (The Ornithologist) will be shown on opening night at the Ibirapuera Auditorium.
What: Mix Brasil
When: November 9th-20th.
Where: Several locations, check website