Starting tomorrow the Latino Cultural Center will bring back popular movies from this year’s Chicago Latino Film Festival for a weekly series of free outdoor screenings. The first, a revival of the Venezuelan film The Blue Apple Tree, takes place at Harrison Park (1842 South Wood Street) and begins around 8 PM. Future screenings include the Colombian romantic comedy Speechless at Logan Square’s Kosciuszko Park (next Wednesday, June 26) and the Mexican romantic comedy In the Middle of Heaven at Calumet Park (July 17). It’s an interesting coincidence that the series should kick off with Blue Apple Tree the day before Facets screens another Venezuelan movie, Mestizo (1989), as part of the African Diaspora Film Festival. Apple Tree is a family film about a city boy spending a summer with his grandfather in the Andes; Mestizo is a Brechtian comedy about the sexual exploits of a colonial administrator’s illegitimate mixed-race son. The films likely won’t have much in common, but who knows what parallels will emerge if you see them back-to-back.
