Celebrate community with Cariño Festival de Cine

Zedrick “Cariño” Alfredo Aurelio “wasn’t a filmmaker,” according to his childhood friend Salvador Salazar. “He was something better.” 

Before passing away at age 26 from adenoid cystic carcinoma in 2021, Aurelio was instrumental in supporting his friends who had filmmaking aspirations, whether it meant lending a car, picking up props and furniture, or making sure the team of teenage moviemakers had breakfast while decorating sets at 6 AM. “We know what that kind of support does for your confidence at those ages,” says Salazar. “That’s what we want to provide for the kids that participate in our festival.”

Aurelio is the namesake of the third annual Cariño Festival de Cine, showcasing emerging filmmakers (ages 13–26) on November 15 and 16 at the OPEN Center for the Arts. Aurelio’s brother, Andres, and Salazar cofounded the festival to honor his supportive legacy. The festival partners with film programs throughout the city to support the continuation of the annual event, as well as to connect the young filmmakers with internship and networking opportunities to enable continued film education and careers. 

Cariño Festival de Cine 2024
Fri 11/15 and Sat 11/16, OPEN Center for the Arts, 2214 S. Sacramento, free, register to reserve your spot
opencenterforthearts.square.site/carino-festival-de-cine

This year’s program features ten short films that exhibit an impressive range of talent and imagination through a mix of narrative and experimental approaches. Simon Finkel’s Brushstrokes utilizes colorization and special effects for a whimsical short reminiscent of the imagery in The Wizard of Oz (1939) and the adult-child mentorship present in some of Hayao Miyazaki’s films. Chris Derek Van’s After Love and Isis Gullette’s So There’s This Girl both feature queer relationships, utilizing the city as scenery in different ways: Chicago’s cityscape in the former carries a longing melancholy as we watch fog cut across skyscrapers and a deep blue sky, while the latter’s open parks and vibrant greenery ground us in the opportunity and innocence of new feelings. 

Space and place are notable in the works of these young filmmakers, whether featuring Chicago’s neighborhoods—like in Run, Devin Briseno’s caper about the search for an envelope of money—or CTA tunnels, as in Haoshu Sascha Deng’s Tunnel Vision, a visual poem shot on film.

Leo Salgado’s The Fourth of July juxtaposes prayer candles against fireworks to ruminate on grief. In Don Chingón, directed by Carlos Lerma, fireworks punctuate a heartfelt ending to the comical odyssey of searching for good Mexican food in Chicago. Lerma’s protagonist proudly concludes, “The saying should be: ‘Home is where you take it,’ because I take mine everywhere with me.” And Don Chingón isn’t the only film in the program that uses editing to convey the feeling of existing in multiple spaces at once. Yanely Castellanos’s DAYDREAMERS is a sisterly tale of transporting to another place through playtime imagination, and Raine Yung’s I Can No Longer See, a collection of experimental shorts made between 2021 and 2023, employs cinematic collage to show the dissection and scattering of personal identity and expectations. 

This may not be the first time Chicago audiences have had a chance to watch these films—many of them were featured at Cinema/Chicago’s CineYouth festival earlier this year—but true to Aurelio’s legacy, the Cariño Festival de Cine is not only an opportunity for exhibition, but a celebration of community. “Cinema has never really been attached to a place,” Salazar says in regard to the festival’s unconventional home at OPEN in Little Village. “We’re right in the heart of Little Village, in a place that no one would really think would show films. We also require the filmmakers to have Spanish subtitles so that the audience from the neighborhood can come in—not all of them speak English—and can enjoy the movies as well.” The tenth film programmed at the festival is the premiere of One Lawndale, a short film made by students as part of the One Summer Chicago program. While the cohort features mostly North Lawndale and Little Village students, the film is a cross-city collaboration of youth connected by their love of film. 

Salazar believes that cinema is not about the space it’s shown in, but the films themselves and the people watching them. He references the Martin Scorsese quote: “Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.” 

The local film community will be represented by the festival jury, composed of industry professionals including Rebecca Fons (Gene Siskel Film Center), Susanne Suffredin (DePaul University), Jeffrey Gabriel Silva (filmmaker, Chicago Latino Film Festival), Magdalena Hernández (Cutters Studios), and Deidre Searcy (Facets). On day one of the festival, the jury panel will provide live critique, culminating in the awards ceremony presenting $300 cash prizes and internship opportunities. Day two of the festival will include hands-on community programming inspired by Laura Sáenz’s film Artista, produced by Full Spectrum Features. Activities include a screening of Artista, a map-making workshop, a bilingual panel discussion about the role of the arts in parenting and education, and a listening party that will feature stories from Chicago teaching artists and educators. 

Zedrick “Cariño” Alfredo Aurelio wasn’t a filmmaker, but the Cariño Festival de Cine is emblematic of the life he lived. “I hope that the students that are participating in our program feel that unconditional love that [Zedrick] provided for us, and that they feel as part of his legacy as we are,” says Salazar. “He was just a good person. We need more of those.”