Awards Go to 16 Different Projects for Broadcast, New Media and Community Engagement
Los Angeles, CA (December 9, 2011) – Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB), a non-profit organization funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, announces 16 newly funded programs as part of its 2011 Public Media Content Fund. The funding initiative invites independent producers to submit proposals for funding on Latino-themed programs or series.
“We are proud of Latino filmmakers and producers who through their craft provide a window to our culture and heritage,” said Edward James Olmos, LPB Chairman.
“We are very excited to support these projects that celebrate the diversity of the Latino experience in the U.S. We will work closely with PBS and our public media partners to bring these compelling stories to the American Public,” said Sandie Viquez Pedlow, LPB Executive Director.
Every year LPB invites independent filmmakers to submit proposals in various stages, from research and development, to production, post-production, new media and community engagement. All proposals are reviewed by a selected group of public television professionals, station programmers, independent filmmakers, academics, and executives from funding organizations.
This year, sixteen (16) proposals were selected for funding. Emerging filmmakers comprise 40% of total funded producers; mid-level producers make up 35%; veteran filmmakers constitute 25%; and 55% of the funded producers are women. More than half of the awarded programs have never been funded by Latino Public Broadcasting before – a direct result of an extensive outreach program for independent filmmakers throughout the nation. The funding category breakdown is as follows: Research and Development – 19%; Production – 12%; Post-production – 38%; New Media – 12%; Community Engagement – 19%. The final slate of programs represents filmmakers from different regions within the U.S. including California, New York, Texas, Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The 2011 awarded projects (alphabetically) are as follows:
Broadcast
The Arizona Project (wt)
Producers/Directors: Carlos Sandoval/Catherine Tambini
Category: Post-Production; 1 Episode/90 Minutes
The explosive emotions and tragic tolls behind Arizona’s struggle with illegal immigration are captured through the power of personal story.
Children of Giant
Producer/Director: Hector Galan
Category: Development; 1 Episode/60 Minutes
Children of Giant exposes the events and emotions that transformed small town Marfa, TX (the film site of George Steven’s epic Giant) during and beyond Anglo/Latino segregation, through the voices of Mexican Americans and Anglos who experienced it firsthand.
¡Coquito!
Producer/Director: Bienvenida Matías
Category: Production; 1 Episode/60 Minutes
Coquito- the Puerto Rican traditional Christmas drink, is a metaphor for a cultural longing that many Puerto Ricans in the diaspora feel for the island they left behind—when they slowly sip it, a floodgate of memory opens.
Escaramuza: Riding from the Heart
Producer/Director: Robin Rosenthal/Bill Yahraus
Category: Post-Production; 1 Episode/90 Minutes
A team of first-generation Mexican American girls construct their identities through a romanticized equestrian tradition, while facing challenges at home, and escalating violence in Mexico.
Farewell, Ferris Wheel
Producer/Director: Jamie Sisley
Co-director: Miguel Martinez
Category: Post-Production; 1 Episode/60 Minutes
Farewell, Ferris Wheel is an examination of the endangered American carnival due to the immigration laws and the Mexican town of Tlapacoyan, which provides one third of America’s carnival labor.
Lezama Lima, Una Sensible Pérdida
Producer/Director: Adriana Bosch
Category: Development; 1 Episode/90 Minutes
A meditation on the personal and social costs of intolerance, this documentary tells the story of José Lezama Lima, a Cuban writer ostracized in the 1960’s and 70’s at the peak of the Cuban revolution’s homophobia and political fervor. Lezama Lima is regarded as a giant of Cuban, Latin American and World Literature.
The Silence of Others
Producer/Director: Almudena Carracedo
Category: Development; 1 Episode/90 Minutes
The Silence of Others will be a deeply personal account of Spain’s “silent” transition from dictatorship to democracy told through the stories of children stolen during Franco’s dictatorship. For the first time, the victims search for their loved ones and confront the perpetrators.
Mariachi High
Director: Ilana Trachtman
Category: Post-Production; 1 Episode/60 Minutes
Mariachi High captures a year in the life of top ranked student musicians in Mariachi Halcon, the varsity level championship ensemble at Zapata High School on the border in South Texas. The film follows these students as they move from school to stage in competitions that are fierce battlegrounds filled with the flash and fire of musical virtuosity.
Marthas
Producer/Director: Cristina Ibarra
Category: Post-Production; 1 Episode/60 Minutes
Marthas is about the extraordinary rite of passage in Laredo, TX where Mexican American daughters of aristocratic Texas border society debut in a grand Colonial ball dressed as American revolutionaries – a tradition that is 114 years old.
Son Siglos
Producers/Directors: Marco Villalobos/Daffodil Altan
Category: Production; 1 Episode/60 Minutes
Son Siglos follows the struggles of Rubí, Noé, and José Luís – three young Afro-Mestizo descendants of Mexico’s oldest musical tradition Son Jarocho. The documentary traces their journey to preserve and elevate their culture on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border.
Tales From a Ghetto Klown
Producer/Director: Benjamin DeJesus
Category: Post-Production; 1 Episode/90 Minutes
Tales From a Ghetto Klown profiles the renowned actor/playwright John Leguizamo and his unorthodox rise to success, while capturing his struggles to mount his latest one-man show on Broadway.
New Media
Frontera! Animated Histories of the Southwest Borderlands
Producer/Writer: John Jota Leaños
3 Webisodes/10 Minutes
Frontera! Animated Histories of the Southwest Borderlands, a series of animated documentary shorts, traces the social history along four major river systems in the Americas that influenced the makings of the southwest borderlands of the United Sates.
Nuestro Mundo, Mi Voz
Producers/Directors: Amie Williams/Kamala Lopez
10 Webisodes/3 Minutes
A ten part interactive new media webisode series following the adventures of ten teenage new media journalists in training during the summer of 2011 in Los Angeles.
Community Engagement
Granito: Every Memory Matters
Producer: Paco de Onis
Director: Pamela Yates
Documentary, 1 Episode/60 Minutes
Granito: Every Memory Matters will implement a multi-platform approach to the documentary by facilitating an intergenerational exchange to awaken and restore the collective memory of Guatemala through an online public archive.
Justice for My Sister
Producer/Director: Kimberly Bautista
Documentary, 1 Episode/70 Minutes
A documentary about one Guatemalan woman’s search of answers to her sister’s brutal murder. The community engagement campaign seeks to help women take action for justice through community screenings, an interactive map and website and a text message based hotline known as the Texting Peace project.
TRUST: Second Acts in Young Lives
Producer/Director: Nancy Kelly
Documentary, 1 Episode/60 Minutes
Trust follows the story of a teenage survivor of child sexual abuse who transforms herself through theater as part of Chicago’s Albany Park Theater Project. A multi-platform engagement campaign will include an interactive website, bilingual engagement tool kit and discussion guide and community screenings.
About Latino Public Broadcasting
Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) supports the development, production, acquisition and distribution of public media content that is representative of Latino people, or addresses issues of interest to Latino Americans. These programs, including the series ‘VOCES’, are produced for dissemination to the public broadcasting system. Edward James Olmos is founder and Chairman of the LPB Board of Directors. Sandie Viquez Pedlow is Executive Director.
For more information please visit www.lpbp.org.
CONTACT
Luis Ortiz, Managing Director
Latino Public Broadcasting
818-847-9656
luis.ortiz@lpbp.org