The ninth annual San Diego Latino Film Festival, an event produced by Ethan van Thillo’s Media Arts Center, attracted a record 10,500 patrons last March and gave further credence to van Thillo’s growing reputation for bringing new and dramatic film artistry to local audiences.

Under van Thillo’s direction, Media Arts Center also produced the fourth annual Cine Mexicano: Mexican Film Series, which opened Aug. 9 and continues through Nov. 14 at the new MadStone Movie Theaters in Mission Valley’s Hazard Center. The Mexican feature film, “Perfume de Violetas,” was screened during the first week of the series. “The film has been playing to packed houses at film festivals throughout the world, and we didn’t want San Diego audiences to be left out,” says van Thillo. “The film typifies the wonderful new wave of cinema that Mexico has to offer these days.”

Van Thillo, 31, has been organizing film festivals since he founded the Chicano Film Festival at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1989. After leaving Santa Cruz, he was program assistant for the National Latino Communications Center in Los Angeles, where he assisted in the coordination of a Chicano film series in Mexico City.

Van Thillo went on to found the Latino Film Festival in San Diego, formerly called Cine Estudiantil. In 1995, he was invited to act as festival director for the third annual Festival Cine Latino in San Francisco. He also has curated more than 15 programs at festivals or special events in the Southwest and Mexico.

Van Thillo’s Media Arts Center has been responsible for teaching digital video production and media literacy to 10- to 18-year-old students across the county, youths who would not normally be exposed to such instruction.

“We reach between 200 and 300 students a year, spending hours at 15 different sites,” says van Thillo. “To me, it’s one of the most exciting projects we’ve done over the past year.”

— Manny Cruz