Latino Producers Academy™
The application for the 2010 Latino Producers Academy
will be posted online on April 2, 2010

NALIP believes that a Producer is the creative originator of films, a self-starter who recognizes ideas that have artistic or commercial merit. Producers must have passion, sensitivity for story and audience, plus the organizational ability and practical smarts to put together a project, then guide it to and through the marketplace. NALIP’s Latino Producers Academy™ provides our Fellows the practical skills and knowledge to accomplish their personal goals and realize their artistic dreams as filmmakers.

The 2009 Latino Producers Academy is made possible by the generous support of:
Univision; Time Warner; Nielsen Media Research; the Walt Disney Company; NEA; Fox Broadcasting; the Academy Foundation; Hanson Film Institute; Hollywood Foreign Press Association; CPB; Latino Public Broadcasting; POV; Packair; Southwest Airlines; UCLA Department of Theatre, Film and Television; California Arts Council; the Coca Cola Company and Universal Studios

About the Latino Producers Academy™

The revelations of the 2000 census about America's current ethnic make-up, and the companion statistics from Professor Chon A. Noriega and the National Hispanic Media Coalition about the percentage of minorities who work in mainstream and independent media point to a gap: too few Latino producers, directors, writers, actors and other technicians work in film, television and media arts professions. NALIP is committed to investigating and improving access and opportunities at all points of the media product pipeline, starting at the beginning: how we train our next generation of media makers and how we educate emerging and mid-career professionals.

NALIP's Latino Producers Academy™ provides our makers an eleven-day intensive course that covers a range of production skills and draws on the expertise of independent film and television producers and executives who are available to mentor and support our makers. Our goal with the Latino Producers' Academy™, in this and future years, is to encourage a diverse and talented group of producers and directors who will create new and greater programming achievements in film, broadcasting and media arts.

Participants are selected from a competitive field of applicants. We now hold this program in Santa Fe, New Mexico – isolated enough to encourage total immersion but near enough to media centers like Los Angeles and New York so that instructors and funders have easy access to participate. The Latino Producers' Academy™ program was developed for producers who create or intend to create feature films, documentaries, and series or other works for network, cable or public television. We see it as an opportunity for these producers to work intensively on the skills that will benefit them most, through classes and through direct contact with talented industry professionals.

The definition of "producer" includes producer/writers and producer/directors who work locally as well as nationally, in all genres of programming, whether video, film, and interactive media, studio-based television as well as field production. We encourage partnerships between producers and directors in both documentaries and feature teams.

The 2008 Latino Producers Academy™ invited 4 of the feature producers to attend with their directors. Modeled on the Sundance Filmmaker Labs, the Director Fellows are provided SAG casts and professional crews, in addition to mentors like Juan Ruiz Anchia, Ligiah Villalobos and Alfredo DeVilla, in order to rehearse, shoot, edit and score select scenes from their projects. 4-5 of the documentary producer/directors who are rough-cut phase attend with their editors; their projects were reviewed and revised, with specific tutorials on storytelling, special effects, clearances, outreach and scoring of works-in-progress, plus fundraising for completion funds. The balance of Documentary Fellows are in production or development.

The LPA continues to assemble an esteemed advisory board of industry professionals plus graduate school educators at UCLA, Columbia College Chicago, UT Austin, College of Santa Fe, the Institute of American Indian Arts, the University of Arizona and Arizona State in an effort to provide the most effective curriculum for post-graduate Latino/a media professionals in need of additional support, mentoring and information to realize their first and second creative projects.

For more information, please contact:
Octavio Marin, NALIP Signature Programs Director
310.395.8880 / octavio@nalip.org