From Apr ’06 Spotlight: Rosie Vargas Goldberg will show her new film, Bloom, at the 2006 Chicago Latino Film Festival on April 22 and May 4 at the Facets Cinematheque on Fullerton. This is the Chicago premiere of Bloom, although she also showed it last year as a “work in progress” at a screening sponsored by the Alliance of Latinos and Jews at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum.
Rosie is a passionate first-time filmmaker who wrote Bloom in an effort to work through intimate family problems that defied easy answers. She also produced it in collaboration with her husband, orthopedic surgeon Benjamin Goldberg, and her friend, Chicago playwright Diana Mucci-Beauchamp. Bloom, directed by Dominguez de los Santos, stars four local actresses: Greta DeBofsky, Mara Monserrat, Maritza Nazario, and Jessica Pérez.
DeBofsky plays a Holocaust survivor. When I asked Rosie why it was important to include this element, she told me “Ruth,” DeBofsky’s character, “has an appreciation of life which she imparts to her own 
daughter Sharon.” “Sharon” (Monserrat) is a therapist whose empathy has a life-altering effect on Bloom’s heroine, a troubled young woman named “Letty” (Pérez).
Rosie and all four actresses will be available for questions after each screening. For more information, visit the CLFF website: http://www.latinoculturalcenter.org.
