Consuelo Alba, executive director and co-founder of the Watsonville Film Festival, is a cultural leader currently serving as the board chair of Arts Council Santa Cruz County. She is an award-winning bilingual documentary filmmaker, film producer, journalist and inaugural member of Rise Together, a coalition of BIPOC leaders working for racial equity.
"It’s really important that people know this is not Mexican Halloween,” the director of the Watsonville Film Festival says of Día de Los Muertos, being celebrated this weekend at the downtown plaza and elsewhere. “The essence of each is very different. Halloween is all about being scary and funny, and though Day of the Dead can be funny, too, they just come from different places."
Watsonville will be getting a head start with its Día de Muertos celebration in downtown on Friday. Presented by the Watsonville Film Festival, it will once again provide an evening of reflection, dancing, food and all of the other hallmarks of the holiday.
On Sept. 19, Rodrigo Reyes' documentary "Sansón and Me" will make its television premiere on PBS' "Independent Lens," having already been screened at many national and international film festivals. Watsonville residents will not have to wait that long, as the Watsonville Film Festival will be hosting a free screening at CineLux Green Valley Cinema Saturday, with the director, one of the actors and family members of the documentary's subjects in attendance.