Global Film Initiative Awards Peruvian and Venezuelan Projects

San Francisco-based Global Film Initiative announced today the ten film projects that have been selected to receive production funds as part of the Initiative's Winter 2012 granting cycle which include two projects from Latin America: Chicama (pictured) by Omar Forero Alva from Peru and  El Regreso / The Return by Patricia Ortega from Venezuela.

Chicama is the story of César, who dreams of living in cosmopolitan Trujillo, but a lack of available teaching posts there takes him to a bucolic Andean village, where he unwittingly falls for his charming students and a captivating colleague. El Regreso tell the story of a young Wayuu girl narrowly escapes the massacre of her beach-dwelling community at Bahia Portete and then attempts to rebuild her life in urban Maracaibo, where she befriends a Castilian girl and learns to overcome differences in language and culture.

The Global Film Initiative is a U.S.-based international arts organization specializing in cultural diplomacy, education and literacy through film. Established in 2002, it has awarded numerous grants to filmmakers in emerging nations around the world, and promoted community arts and education through distribution and exhibition of its signature world cinema series, Global Lens.