¡Salud!

Los Angeles, Feb 20 -- ¡Salud! garnered the coveted Audience Choice Award at Los Angeles’ Pan African Film and Arts Festival (PAFF). “¡Salud! is just the kind of film we want to showcase,” said PAFF Executive Director Ayuko Babu at the screening held at the Magic Johnson Theater. Over 200,000 people turned out for the 15th annual festival, the largest international Black film festival in the United States and the country’s largest event for Black history month.

Filmgoers cast their ballots for ¡Salud!, one of 170 films in the festival. “Amazing! A film we are going to cherish,” said Agrippa “EZ” Ezozo, President and Founder of the Africa Diaspora Foundation, which co-sponsored the evening with ¡Salud!.

On receiving the award, ¡Salud! Producer/Director Connie Field, whose other film Have You Heard from Johannesburg also won the Jury Prize for Best Documentary, said “I’m deeply honored.” Executive Producer Gail Reed concurred: “It’s something very special when audiences are so moved that they vote for your work.”

Actor Danny Glover joined the filmmakers and California State Assemblywoman Karen Bass for a Q&A session after the show. Noted Glover: “¡Salud! speaks to health care for our communities in California, New Orleans, the whole country—especially to the over 45 million people without health care. ¡Salud! tells people the world over that there is a country that has made health care a right, and that country is Cuba.”

“This film shows what is possible if the priorities are right in your society,” said Karen Bass, who is also Vice Chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus.

Jan Flint, Director of Black Women for Wellness, which co-sponsored the ¡Salud! screening, presented the film and offered thanks to the numerous community organizations that contributed to the screening.

From the PAFF press release (February 19, 2007) www.paff.org: “The PAFF Audience Choice Award was given to ¡SALUD! (United States), produced and directed by Connie Field. Engulfed by health care crises, South Africa, the Gambia, Honduras, and Venezuela work with Cuba in an effort to overcome the frightening scarcities and inequities in their health care systems. In addition to traveling to poor rural and urban areas to provide medical care to people, many of whom have never seen a doctor. Cuban doctors train would-be health professionals from the very populations in need of medical care.”