Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB), a non-profit organization funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, announces eleven newly funded programs as part of its 2015 Public Media Content Fund. The initiative invites independent producers to submit proposals on Latino-themed programs or series for funding consideration.

Every year LPB invites independent filmmakers to submit proposals in various stages, from research and development, to production, post-production and new media. All proposals are reviewed by a group of public media professionals, station programmers, independent filmmakers, academics, and executives from funding organizations.

Congratulations to all the recipients, especially our long standing NALIPsters below! 

Research and Development

Salvadoran American Civil Rights Documentary Project
Director/Producer: Nina Alvarez, Zócalo Media 
1 Episode/60 Minutes

In the 1980s, Salvadoran refugees fled from repressive military regimes and death squads in El Salvador and sought asylum in the United States. However, unlike refugees from other countries, many Salvadoran refugees were denied asylum and were placed in detention centers suffering civil rights abuses in the country they hoped would be their adopted home. This documentary will explore an unknown chapter in American civil rights history told through two landmark lawsuits against the U.S. federal government, Orantes v. Smith and American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh which resulted in sweeping changes to U.S. immigration policy.

Broadcast

Coming Out of the Dark: The Times of Gloria Estefan (w.t.)
Producer: John J. Valadez
Category: Production: 1 Episode/60 Minutes

This documentary explores the extraordinary life and music of Gloria Estefan, from a refugee fleeing communist Cuba to her extraordinary rise to the top of the pop charts. Through her journey, Estefan re-defined American popular music, and opened the way for a new generation of artists. 

Empowering the People: The Willie Velasquez Story (w.t)
Director/Producer: Hector Galán, Galán Productions, Inc. 
Category: Production; 1 Episode 60 Minutes

Through Willie Velasquez's journey from radical student activist to respected statesman, this documentary will examine the history of the Latino vote, the barriers Latinos had to overcome to obtain representation, the contemporary issues facing Latinos today and the role of the Latino vote in the upcoming 2016 election. 

Memories of a Penitent Heart
Director/Co-Producer: Cecilia Aldarondo 
Category: Post-Production; 1 Episode/60 Minutes

Memories of a Penitent Heart follows a filmmaker's journey of discovering the truth about her uncle's life 25 years after his death from AIDS as told through the contradictions of family members, open secrets, and shifting memories. Her investigation uncovers his life as a gay man in New York City, unacceptance of his lifestyle by his mother in Puerto Rico, and the struggle for legitimacy in a religious Latino family.

New Media

Millennials in Miniature: The Latino Americans of New York City
Director/Producer: William D. Caballero
10 Episodes/1 Minute

Through the art of 3D printing and miniature reenactments, this video series explores the creative process amongst ten innovative and unique Latino filmmakers, artists, musicians, poets, and dancers. 

Four of the year’s 25 top-grossing movies star a minority in a leading role. All but two had white directors. And the number of minority actors forecasters expect to get Oscar nominations can be counted on one hand.

In the year since the Sony Pictures hack exposed racially insensitive emails and cast a spotlight on Hollywood’s diversity problem, movie studios have shown little progress in hiring more people of color for their casts and crews.

The industry is ignoring a gold mine. Every year for the past half-decade, the average white American has bought a ticket to fewer films than the average black, Hispanic or Asian moviegoer, industry data shows. Though 37 percent of the U.S. population, minorities bought 46 percent of the $1.2 billion in tickets sold in the United States last year.

Some of the year’s biggest surprises had diverse actors and small budgets but ended up dominating the silver screen. For five straight weeks ending in September, movies with predominately black casts topped the box office, including the Christian drama “War Room,” thriller “The Perfect Guy” and rap biography “Straight Outta Compton,” which has made $200 million on a $28 million budget to become the highest-grossing biopic of all time.

More recently, “Creed,” a “Rocky” spinoff starring Michael B. Jordan and directed by Ryan Coogler — both 20-something black men who led the 2013 critical darling “Fruitvale Station” — has triumphed with $72 million at the box office and one of the best opening weekends in the boxing franchise’s 40-year history.

High-profile hires of actors such as Jordan in “Creed” and John Boyega in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” have remained the exception in a Hollywood that has shown only stuttering progress over the past year in getting more-diverse talent into blockbuster roles.

But that lack of diversity, long a social issue, is increasingly becoming a business issue, and analysts say the success of movies such as “Creed” and “Compton” could make a big difference in persuading Hollywood’s dealmakers to better reflect the multicultural country it represents.

“Oftentimes it’s not emotional appeal, it’s the spreadsheet that can make the change,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst with industry researcher Rentrak. “Show the empirical evidence. Look at the profitability of all these movies written, directed, produced by African Americans. That’s how you get the attention of Hollywood — or at least the people holding the purse strings.”

For all its grandeur, Hollywood is a fiscally conservative industry, and studios and financiers have long proved hesitant to invest tens of millions of dollars into projects backed by filmmakers they do not know.

Very often, the people they know share their skin tone. In 2013, more than 92 percent of movie studios’ senior executives, 82 percent of film directors and 88 percent of film writers were white, UCLA researchers said.

“When I go to [film studio] offices, I see no black folks except for . . . the security guard,” director Spike Lee said while accepting an honorary Oscar last month at the Governors Awards. “It’s easier to be the president of the United States as a black person than to be the head of a studio.”

That monolithic whiteness has created a chicken-and-egg problem: Talented actors and filmmakers of color are routinely shut out because they were never given a chance in the first place.

Over the past year, “my sense is not a lot has changed,” said Darnell Hunt, director of UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. “The people who control the industry are still very reluctant to take a risk on untested talent — that is to say, people of color.”

Of the top 100 films last year, 73 percent of all characters were white, and only 17 of those movies starred nonwhite lead or supporting actors, University of Southern California researchers found.

Minority audiences, of course, did not flood only minority films: People of color bought more than 60 percent of the U.S. tickets to last year’s “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” a $245 million blockbuster whose cast was almost exclusively white.

The power of minorities’ spending, particularly in movies with more diverse stars and stories, has become impossible to ignore. “Furious 7,” which made more than $1 billion worldwide, pocketed 62 percent of its $350 million gross in the United States from minority moviegoers. Notably, “Compton,” which far outpaced financial projections, counted a box-office audience that was 75 percent nonwhite.

“If you try to be diverse for the sake of being diverse, it’s going to fail,” Jeff Shell, the chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment, the studio behind “Compton,” told Variety last month. “The real reason to do it is that it’s good business. Our audience is diverse.”

The debate over Hollywood diversity sharpened last winter after stolen private emails between Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal and movie producer Scott Rudin revealed the two joking that President Obama would like only films starring black actors: “I bet he likes Kevin Hart,” Rudin said. Both have since apologized, and Pascal lost her job.

The Academy Awards solidified the slight earlier this year when, for only the second time since 1998, no actor of color was named among the Oscars’ 20 acting nominees. Viewers chastised the Academy with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, and the Oakland Tribune headlined the news “And the Oscar for best Caucasian goes to . . .”

The Golden Globe nominations, unveiled last week, featured a number of nods for minority TV actors but few candidates of color in film. Of the 35 nominees for best director, actor, actress and supporting actor, only three were minorities: director Alejandro González Iñárritu and actors Will Smith and Idris Elba. None of the 10 nominees for best picture were led by minority stars.

The frustrations over Hollywood’s lack of diversity could grow by the next Oscars, hosted in February by comedian Chris Rock, who last year wrote an essay calling Hollywood “a white industry.” When Rock first hosted the show, in 2005, he joked that the Oscars’ four black nominees made it “kind of like the Def Oscar Jam.”

The academy has yet to announce its nominees, but predictions from Oscar handicappers have surfaced only a few minority hopefuls: Elba in “Beasts of No Nation” and Samuel L. Jackson in “The Hateful Eight” for best supporting actor; Smith for best actor in “Concussion”; and Iñárritu for best director for “The Revenant.” Also, “Compton” is a long shot for best picture.

No women of color are in the running to win any of the 10 lead- or supporting-actress Oscar nods this year, a discouraging sign coming shortly after Viola Davis became the first African American woman to win an Emmy as lead actress in a drama, for her role in Shonda Rhimes’s “How to Get Away With Murder.”

“The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity,” Davis said in September during her acceptance speech. “You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.”

The academy said recently that it will launch a five-year plan, called A2020, intended to encourage film executives to hire a more diverse talent base. Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in September that, although the academy “has no power over Hollywood [and] nothing to do with hiring,” she hoped the plan can get studios and agencies to “widen their normal stream of thought.”

Filmmakers, in turn, have pointed the finger at their financiers. Director Ridley Scott, criticized for casting white actors, including Christian Bale as Moses, in “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” said last year that the move was needed to secure the money for his $140 million epic: “I can’t mount a film of this budget . . . and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. . . . I’m just not going to get it financed.”

Studios and film crews that did fill roles with actors of color faced resistance this year from angry fans, including over Boyega in his role as a stormtrooper in the new “Star Wars” and Jordan for his “Fantastic Four” role playing a superhero who is white in the original comic-book version.

When big films this year focused on minority characters, many instead filled their spots with white actors. In “Aloha,” for instance, Emma Stone was cast to play a Chinese Hawaiian woman.

After “Gods of Egypt,” a fantasy tale set in the ancient Middle East, was cast with mostly white actors in Egyptian roles, director Alex Proyas apologized, saying that “the process of casting a movie has many complicated variables, but it is clear that our casting choices should have been more diverse.”

“Selma” director Ava DuVernay said the “Gods of Egypt” apology was an “unusual occurrence worth noting” for a casting problem “that happens all the time.” She also said it made her value the minority castings in “Star Wars” and “Creed” even more, tweeting, “We all deserve icons in our own image.”

Check this out at the Washington Post.

by Nellie Andreeva

Fox is showing commitment to getting a Latino drama series going. The latest contender is an untitled project written/executive produced by Eduardo Cisneros(Instructions Not Included) and Jason Shuman (Role Models, Lone Survivor). From 20th Century Fox TV, it is described as a modern Romeo and Juliet tale set against the backdrop of Los Angeles’ new Latino wealth in the music and radio industry.

Fox recently took a stab at a the Latino-flavoredUrban Cowboy remake, which did not go beyond the pilot stage. Romeo and Juliet has been a popular classic concept for the networks to exploit. This development season, ABC has Still Star-Crossed, aRomeo And Juliet sequel drama based on a book from Scandal co-executive producer Heather Mitchell.

Shuman is repped by CAA, Hertzberg Media and attorney Scott Whitehead. Cisneros is repped by WME, Valor Entertainment and attorney Pam Black.

Check this out at Deadline.com

Directed and Produced by NALIP Member Alvaro Ron along with an amazing team of Latino Filmmakers and the support of the Producers Guild of America, The Red Thunder (El Trueno Rojo) is a unique short film released in more than 40 different countries with over 150 Official Selections. It has recently been nominated by the Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the 30th Goya Awards. 

The Red Thunder is also a special project since it is being shown in Schools and Hospitals around the world for educational purposes. It also supports the Non Profit Idea Libre to build a School in a small village in Kenya. You can find more information here.  

BY BRETT MARTIN

Not that long ago, in a filmmaking galaxy not all that far away, Oscar Isaac built an eminently credible career playing soulful, brooding, complicated men in smallish critically acclaimed films. It was fun while it lasted. America, behold the next great Jedi* of Hollywood

I did not know if the sound carried to wherever Oscar Isaac was at that moment. If it did, I wondered if some part of him shivered. To become part ofStar Wars is less like joining a cast and more like joining a priesthood. It made perfect sense that the final trailer for the newest episode, The Force Awakens,aired at halftime of a Monday Night Football game, the NFL being another multi-billion-dollar corporate enterprise that has turned the neat trick of getting itself treated as a sacred public institution. (Not to mention the shared fetish for Roman numerals.) Isaac, meanwhile, has made his growing name in a series of brilliant but darkly idiosyncratic roles: the brooding businessman so vain about his integrity that it becomes its own kind of corruption in A Most Violent Year, or the wounded, wandering folk singer of the Coen brothers'Inside Llewyn Davis. Even his sci-fi debut, as the cerebral sex-robot-building Frankenstein of Ex Machina, was high on discussions of the nature of consciousness, low on explosions.

Moreover, he has shown himself to be a lifelong non-joiner and an actor so private about his private life that the mere use of the word girlfriend leads him to try to take it back the next day. And now Oscar Isaac is about to join the biggest, most scrutinized club in the world.

To which the actor responds in pretty much the only way he can: with a shrug. “Obviously I think a lot of people are going to see Star Wars,” he says. “I imagine I might get recognized more. But right now it's still sort of an abstract idea. And, to be honest, that's something people tell you for a long time. Like, every other movie: ‘Here it comes! Here it comes! You better be ready!’ ”

Read more at GQ.com