The Original LxFF Cast, circa 2017
The MSU Latinx Film Festival (LxFF) is a biennial, curated film festival that serves the Great Lake State of Michigan with a special focus on the Latino/a/x communities of Michigan State University, the greater Lansing area, and the mid-Michigan region.
The mission of the MSU Latinx Film Festival is to create a space for the celebration and promotion of independent latinx cinema, which we conceive of inclusively as Spanish, English and Portuguese language films from Latin America, Spain and the United States. We promote films that are not readily available in the U.S. that challenge audiences to see the world differently.
We seek to celebrate latinx filmmaking and inspire public debates and private reflection about the social, cultural and political questions raised by latinx cinema through post-screening discussions, director Q&As and special events, in addition to producing the space in which informal, spontaneous and transformative interactions can organically take place.
LxFF began as a bold initiative of MSU’s Department of Romance & Classical Studies led by Founder/Director Scott Boehm, and it has grown to become a collaborative effort between multiple academic units and a number of institutional and community partners. LxFF members are drawn from MSU faculty, graduate students and staff, as well as community leaders who work closely together in a unique working relationship that bridges both traditional professional divisions and long-standing divisions between MSU and the surrounding community.
LxFF has been consistently supported by grants from Pragda, the leading educational distributor of Latin cinema, and LxFF 2020 received competitive sponsorship from the Michigan Film & Digital Media Office, recognizing it as an important state cultural initiative. (Unfortunately, this state funding was cut during the COVID-19 pandemic).
In 2020, LxFF also received the “Excellence in Diversity Award” (Team Category – Emerging Progress) from MSU’s Office of Inclusion & Intercultural Initiatives. After a pandemic-induced hiatus, the renewed vision of LxFF is to reestablish itself as a dynamic Latinx festival of reference and the largest festival of its type in Michigan, while promoting Latinx filmmaking within the Great Lakes region.
MSU Latinx Film Festival 