Producers: Maria Teresa Rodriguez/Kathryn Pyle
Category: Post-Production
Genre: Documentary
1 Episode/60 Minutes

¿Dónde Están? The Disappeared Children of El Salvador is a documentary about children, now adults, who vanished during the Salvadoran civil war of the 1980’s. Many were survivors of massacres, taken from the scene by U.S. Trained soldiers of the Salvadoran Army, permanently separating them from their communities and their identities. Told through the eyes of three survivors who were separated from their families, the documentary reveals the protagonists’ effort to reclaim their lost identities in an El Salvador in transition from armed conflict. Through the stories of Jenny Wolf, Miguel Morales and Margarita Zamora, and the civil society organizations that support their quest, ¿D&oactue;nde Están? The Disappeared Children of El Salvador asks the larger question: How does a society heal itself from the scars of a civil war?

Producer: Michael Torres
Category: Research and Development
Genre: Documentary
1 Episode/120 Minutes

Albizu is a two-hour documentary poised to revitalize the legacy of Puerto Rico’s most prominent freedom fighter. The film’s unique approach not only captures the personal story of a charismatic leader at the center of a major socio-political conflict; it takes a contemporary look at Pedro Albizu Campo’s invaluable contribution to Puerto Rican identity and culture.

Producer: Denise Zmekhol
Category: Outreach
Genre: Documentary
1 Episode/60 Minutes

Fifteen years ago, Filmmaker/Photographer Denise Zmekhol traveled along a modern-day road in the age-old forest of the Amazon and photographed the children she met. Haunted by the faces of the children and the murder of her friend, Chico Mendes, Denise decides to return to the Amazon. Part road-movie, part time-travel, Children of the Amazon combines intimate interviews and her personal and poetic meditation on environmental devastation, resistance and renewal. As she travels the road, she searches for the now grown children she photographed and documents them once again. This time their stories are of change and of their struggle to save the forest.

Producer: Natalia Almada
Category: Post-Production
Genre: Documentary
1 Episode/60 Minutes

“Dictator,” “Iron Man,” “Nun-Burner,” “Father of Modern Mexico,” the filmmaker’s great-grandfather, Plutarco Elias Calles was the president of Mexico from 1924 to 1928. El General is a feature length film about the conflicting history she inherited as the great-granddaughter of one of Mexico’s most controversial figures and the socio-economic injustice that has prevailed from the Revolution of 1910 to the present. El General is a journey into her family’s past and an intimate portrait of Mexico then and now.

Producer: Jennifer Maytorena Taylor
Category: Outreach
Genre: Documentary
1 Episode/60 Minutes

New Muslim Cool follows a Puerto Rican-American Muslim hip-hop artist and his family facing life in post-9/11 America. This observational documentary’s three acts follow Jason “Hamza” Pérez as he works to build a religious community in Pittsburgh, seeks custody of his children after a failed first marriage, and marries Rafiah, a devout young woman from a conservative African American Muslim family. After the FBI raids their mosque, Hamza and Rafiah cope with the fear of losing their new family, and they forge unexpected friendships with Christian and Jewish allies.

Producer: Yolanda Cruz
Category: Post-Production
Genre: Documentary
1 Episode/60 Minutes

Re-encounters chronicles the personal experience of Oaxacan artist Alejandro Santiago, who learned the truth of the old saying that you can never go home again. After more than a decade living abroad, Santiago returned to the Zapotec Sierra seeking the village of his childhood. Instead, he found abandoned houses, empty streets, and deserted farm fields. Santiago’s sense of emptiness drove him to search for answers in his art. His current project, 2501 Migrants, expresses his response—a symbolic community of life-size clay sculptures in homage to those who left. He plans to repopulate his village one statue at a time. Like many migrants, Santiago survives by recreating memories of life back home. Re-encounters tells his story and the stories of countless others.

Producer: Bernardo Ruiz
Category: Production
Genre: Documentary
1 Episode/60 Minutes

For nearly 150 years, baseball has been known as “America’s Pastime” and has reflected cultural values in a way that no other sport, and few other institutions have. Today, roughly one quarter of Major League players claim Latino heritage. Yet, until the mid-1950’s few Latinos were in the game. While Roberto Clemente was not the first Latino to play in the big leagues, he was the first Latino star to have a major and lasting impact on the game. By dint of his tremendous talent, his pride and his grace, he helped to shatter stereotypes about Latinos, to make the game more accessible to other Latino players and to provide a great source of pride to a growing Latino population in the mainland United States. This film delves into Clemente’s story and what it reveals about the Latino experience in the United States in the second half of the 20th century.

Producer: James Rutenbeck
Category: Post-Production
Genre: Documentary
1 Episode/ 60 Minutes

Saint Patrick’s Parish has become a kind of social laboratory as a traditionally Irish-American institution changes to reflect the city that surrounds it. Scenes from a Parish raises questions about the nature of community – how the ideals of a faith community come up against pressures that place this ideal at risk. In this film, nine Catholics face obstacles – class, ethnicity and sexual orientation – that threaten to break apart the fellowship they seek.

Producer: Gemma Cubero/Celeste Carrasco
Category: Post-Production
Genre: Documentary
1 Episode/ 60 Minutes

Challenging gender roles and rigid social traditions, She Wants to Be a Matador is a documentary about women who chose the profession of bullfighting. Through the viewpoint of the female matadors, the film explores why these women pursue the same dream as their male counterparts – the glory of dominating the beast. They are forced to fight not only against the bull, but also against historical and political events, including decades of legal prohibitions and prejudice.

Producers: Marcia Jarmel/Ken Schneider
Category: Post-Production
Genre: Documentary
1 Episode/ 60 Minutes

Educational inequity, immigrant integration, cross-cultural competency, white flight, global competitiveness – what links this nexus of concerns not usually spoken in one breath? Bilingualism may be the surprising answer. Speaking in Tongues documents the experience of one city grappling with the challenge. Amidst the widespread perception that bilingual education, intended as a transitional program, has failed, the San Francisco school board will consider a measure to offer language immersion education to all public school students.

Producer: Rick Tejada-Flores
Category: Production
Genre: Documentary
1 Episode/ 60 Minutes

The genesis of The Road to Chulumani occurred during the filmmaker’s first visit to Bolivia, in 1997. During this visit, he made family connections and found literature that described his family’s involvement in the slave trade, as well as in the Chaco War during the 1930s. While American audiences have seen several views of the legacy of slavery in North America, how the process played out in Latin America is completely unknown. Likewise, regional conflicts, like the Chaco War, which had a profound impact on Latin American societies, are not well known or understood. The filmmaker will take viewers on a personal journey to search the past and discover his family’s history and how it has affected Bolivia.

Producer: Phillip Rodriguez
Category: Research and Development
Genre: Documentary
1 Episode/60 Minutes

Latino history – to the extent that it has been narrated at all – is full of half-told stories. The case of Oscar Zeta Acosta, also known as “The Brown Buffalo” is one example. A brilliant and controversial writer/lawyer/activist, Acosta is remembered less for his role in the Chicano movement in the late 1960s than for his fictionalized appearance in a white man’s novel. The novel was Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; the character was Dr. Gonzo, a Sancho Panza-esque sidekick to the illustrious Raoul Duke. Through exclusive interviews and rare archival material The Secret Life of Buffalo Z. Brown explores Acosta’s colorful biography, his political and literary contributions and his legacy.

Producer: Ray Telles
Category: Post Production
Genre: Documentary
2 Episodes/60 Minutes

The Storm that Swept Mexicotells the story of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the first major political and social revolution of the 20th century.  It is a conflict that not only changed the course of Mexican history, transforming economic and political power within the nation, but also profoundly impacted the relationships between Mexico and the rest of the world. This documentary illuminates the complex historical, social, political, economic and cultural forces that shaped the Mexican Revolution, influenced the course of the conflict and determined its consequences, as well as the role of myth and memory in shaping public perceptions of this event and its legacy.