First look: The quest for Atari’s secret desert burial ground

El Paso filmmaker Carlos Corral is happy to share the dirt on a Southern New Mexico treasure hunt and a 30-year-old mystery for Atari video game fans. Corral worked as the location sound mixer for Lightbox Entertainment in the spring of 2014 when the production team came to Alamogordo, N.M. to learn what, if anything, legendary video game company Atari buried there. Atari went bankrupt in 1983 after releasing a cassette game called “ET The Extraterrestrial” that some say was the worst video game in history. Many believed that an embarrassed Atari dumped hundreds of copies of the game cassette in an Alamogordo landfill to hide them from the public. In a recent post on his blog, Corral shares photos of his experience on the set, including some of the artifacts that were unearthed.

Los documentales aumentan en el 30.° Festival de Cine Latino de Chicago

CHICAGO — Animación, comedia, documental y drama son sólo algunas de las categorías que se presentarán en la 30.ª edición del Festival de Cine Latino de Chicago (CLFF, por sus siglas en inglés). Alejandro Riera, Director de Relaciones con los Medios de Comunicación del festival, nos dejó saber que este año habrá 78 películas; 31 son de nuevos directores. Habrá también 14 documentales. “Comparado con festivales pasados, hay más documentales este año”, explicó Riera. Riera no puede decir si el público prefiera el género documental sobre los otros géneros.

A committee of UTEP faculty and students and the Future Leaders in Public Relations organization produced La Estrella Film Festival. (April Lopez/Borderzine.com)

La Estrella Film Festival promotes borderland student films

EL PASO – Aspiring filmmakers from across the border region participated in December in the inaugural launch of La Estrella Film Festival, an event created to celebrate and showcase local student talent. “It’s great because maybe as students we just don’t feel we’re prepared to compete in a larger market,” said Arturo Rubio, who won first place in the commercial category. “So this being right at our back door, it gives more motivation to put yourself out there in the future.”

A committee of faculty and students and the Future Leaders in Public Relations organization produced the event, held December 7 at the University of Texas at El Paso Union Cinema. The festival received over 100 film submissions and 22 were screened. Bobby Gutierrez, senior lecturer in the UTEP Department of Communication, conceived the idea for the student film festival and aimed to create a larger platform for local filmmakers to show off their talent.

Ramon Hamilton, director of Smuggled, answers questions about the production of his movie. (Natassia Bonyanpour/Borderzine.com)

‘Smuggled’ – film depicts the torture and terror suffered by immigrants crossing illegally into the U.S.

EL PASO – With a rosary dangling from her wrist and bible in hand, a mother and her 10-year-old son sit in a concealed compartment under a bus making its route from Mexico to the United States in hopes of being reunited with the child’s father. For days, they endure the strain of possibly being discovered, and the physiological stress of a lack of hygienic, food ration troubles, and the mother’s critical diabetic condition. This is the premise for the film, Smuggled, screened at University of Texas at El Paso by the Social Justice Initiative. The plot gives insight into the dangerous journey that many immigrants undergo despite fatal or legal risks. Director of The Social Justice Initiative, Arvind Singhal, said he brought the film to the campus because of its relevance to the border city.

Lisa Elliott, assistant professor at EPCC, and Bobby Gutierrez, senior lecturer at UTEP, present student work at the third annual Student Film Festival. (Alejandro Alba/Borderzine.com)

Film festival gives students a greater audience for their work

EL PASO – Film students from the University of Texas at El Paso and El Paso Community College yanked their movies out of their computers and projected them for everyone to view at the third annual Student Film Festival. “The biggest tragedy in filmmaking is for a film to stay in a hard drive. This is what you want, a venue where people can see your work,” said Robert Gutierrez, digital media production professor at UTEP. Gutierrez said the collaboration between the two schools worked as a pipeline so that EPCC students can see what to expect when they transfer to UTEP. “I think the students, before, used to produce for just their friends, but now they know that other people are watching, so that raises their quality of their work,” Gutierrez said.

Estudian las comunidades judías, musulmanas y cristianas de la Edad Media en Andalucía

EL PASO – Un grupo de 29 estudiantes y tres instructores de la Universidad de Texas en El Paso viajaron a España en mayo para explorar de manera directa la historia y la cultura españolas. Educadores y estudiantes desarrollaron un proyecto interdisciplinario original que evalúa la importancia de la tolerancia religiosa en la construcción de una sociedad líder en Europa en los campos de arte y ciencia durante la Edad Media. El grupo viajó por Andalucía durante tres semanas, realizando investigaciones sobre la historia de las comunidades judías, musulmanas, y cristianas en el sur de España. Los resultados de este viaje e investigaciones están cristalizadas en el documental, antología, y exhibición fotográfica titulada Andalucía: Fusión de tres culturas. “Ha sido la más hermosa experiencia de mi vida”, dijo Héctor Enríquez, director del proyecto, en la premier privada del documental en presentada en el Quinn Hall de UTEP aquí el 17 de abril.

The Plaza Theatre reopened as the Plaza Theatre Performing Arts Center on March 17, 2006. (Oscar Garza/Borderzine.com)

The Classic Film Festival to welcome Al Pacino at El Paso’s historic Plaza Theatre

EL PASO – Nostalgia is a wonderful thing when you are well along in life. The memories of youth many times built around classic films are resurrected during the very rare film festivals held from time to time. Well, more than 80 classic films will be shown in El Paso in August. The Plaza Classic Film Festival will be held August 2 – 12 at the historic Plaza Theater. The festival was created in 2008 to celebrate this country’s rich cinema history and rekindle the joy of going to the movies.

“I grew up with a family that had dreams of their own" said Nino. (Jorge Castanon/Borderzine.com)

Hispanic actor loves living a double life – His own and the one he portrays on stage

EL PASO  – Ivan Niño may be able to portray someone else every day in the career path he has chosen, but at the end of the day he is just himself – a gay Hispanic struggling to become a successful actor. Niño, 20, has already been featured in a few films, is teaching an acting class for other aspiring actors and is currently filming a pilot for a children’s TV show. “I’ve done everything, a lot more than just acting. I’ve done the ‘dirty jobs.’ The people that I’ve met or have worked with are often of different ethnicities, but are usually more often than not Caucasian. It can be a little intimidating,” he said.

The Miner Movie Makers

EL PASO — At the beginning of the school year in the fall semester of 2009, Bobby Gutierrez had an ambitious group of students in his Intro to Video class. Among those students were Stephanie Soto, Joel Gannon, and myself, Michael Huante. Through the course of the semester, the three of us worked on projects together and with other students, and forged a friendship that holds strong to this day. Stephanie Soto, a senior Digital Media major, came up with an idea by the end of the semester, and told Joel and I about it. She expressed her thoughts on the fact that UTEP didn’t have much going in the area of film, and that something had to be done about it.

Reservado – Un Juárez sutil

EL PASO, Texas — Seis actores locales y un número considerable de extras podrán formar parte del elenco de un cortometraje que se comenzará a rodar en El Paso el 15 de noviembre y cuyo casting comienza este viernes, informaron sus realizadores. La pieza cinematográfica, titulada “Reservado”, cuenta las peripecias, viscisitudes, concesiones morales que vive un mesero de Ciudad Juárez para reunir suficiente dinero y comprar la sortija de matrimonio para su novia. Tras ese pretexto aflora una verdad excepcional: las ganas de vivir, la pobreza, el amor, el miedo, los riesgos de un submundo rico en matices, dudas, sueños, así como el caudal cultural único de México. “Juárez y El Paso son una misma comunidad, rodaremos aquí porque queremos ofrecer un producto netamente paseño, además aquí hay talento genuinamente mexicano que podemos aprovechar”, dijo, el productor, Christian Moldes. Y agregó: “Nos resultará más cómodo por cuestiones propias de la producción, todo el equipo de trabajo vive aquí, así que optimizaremos tiempo, gastos, locaciones, todo”.

They Call Him … Machete

EL PASO, Texas — Hot chicks, big guns, blood flowing, a few laughs and a big guy they call Machete, oh my! Can you expect any less from a Robert Rodriguez flick? Rodriguez, a native Texan has been releasing his signature gritty, home-edited films since he began his film-directing career in 1991. The Mariachi brought notoriety and led to some of the most notable films today such as Desperado, From Dusk Til Dawn, and Sin City. In 2007, Rodriguez teamed up with Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth, and Rob Zombie to release a double feature Grindhouse type film, Planet Terror, and Death Proof.

Students’ Big-screen Dreams Shine at the Sun City Film Festival

EL PASO, Texas — The Sun City Film festival, supposedly a biannual event, seemed forgotten after a three-year absence, but finally it came back to life giving student film makers another opportunity to show El Paso their movie-making skills. Patrick Mullins, senior lecturer in the Communication department at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), first envisioned the festival as a biannual event, but things did not exactly turn out the way he had planned. “It had been three years. I think the original idea was if not a yearly than to have a biannual festival and because of other projects three years have gone by,” Mullins said. “We thought it was high time to have a student film festival here on campus again.”

The Sun City Film festival came back —April 30-May 1—and the response to it from the student filmmakers was positive.