Ola Film Festival Returns For Ninth Year

Four celebrated films will be screened at the ninth annual OLA Latino Film Festival, a two-day affair to be held this weekend at the new Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill.

Organized by the Organización Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island, the festival is planned for Saturday, December 1, from 6 to 10 p.m. and Sunday, December 2, from 3 to 7 p.m. in the Parrish’s new Lichtenstein Theater.

The first film to be screened will be “Locas Mujeres,” or “Mad Women,” at 6 p.m. on Saturday. Filmed in Chile and released in 2010, the documentary by Maria Elena Wood is about the inner world of Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. It won the Audience Choice Award at the Santiago International Film Festival and was an official selection at the prestigious animation and documentary festival DOKLeipzig in Germany.

“‘Mad Women’ has a world renowned Chilean poet that had a very strong connection with another woman, this was a situation that in the ’50s was not accepted by Chilean society,” wrote OLA Festival Founder Isabel Sepulveda of the film.

Patricio Guzman’s documentary “Nostalgia for the Light” will screen on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. The film, shot in Chile’s Atacama Desert and released in 2010, is about the driest place on earth—where astronomers from all over the world gather to observe the stars while local people sift through the soil looking for graves of family members killed during the nation’s brutal political past.

The documentary, an official selection of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, has been called “stunningly beautiful” and “an extraordinary film about the unknown and the unknowable” by film critics. Ms. Sepulveda says, “‘Nostalgia of the Light’ is a powerful film that shows one of the most amazing and peaceful places in the world; this in contrast with the killings under the Pinochet regime.”

In “Jardin en el Mar,” or “Garden in the Sea,” award-winning director Thomas Riedelsheimer follows Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias to the Mexican Sea of Cortez, to the depths of Candelor Bay off the Island of Espiritu Santo, where she was commissioned to create an underwater sculpture. The documentary, which screens on Sunday at 3 p.m., was filmed in Mexico and released in 2011.

“‘Garden in the Sea’ takes [the viewer] to a beautiful trip under water,” Ms. Sepulveda wrote of the documentary film.

The festival concludes with “Abrazo Partido,” or “Lost Embrace,” by Daniel Burman on Sunday at 4:30 p.m. The feature film, shot in Argentina and released in 2004, is about a young Jewish-Argentinean man who wants to move to Europe.

The movie tells the story of Ariel, who leaves university and wanders through the downtown gallery where his mother has a lingerie shop and his brother runs an import business, as he tries to obtain a Polish passport. Along the way, he discovers why his estranged father left the family.

“A touchy and funny film,” Ms. Sepulveda said of “Abrazo Partido.”

Tickets for the ninth annual OLA Latino Film Festival screenings are $10 each, or $8 for Parrish members. The festival will be held on Saturday, December 1, from 6 to 10 p.m. and on Sunday, December 2, from 3 to 7 p.m. at the new Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill. For reservations, visit parrishart.org or call 283-2118.