by Abigail Licad

Diana Ross's "I'm Coming Out" is blasting in the background when Maria Hinojosa picks up the phone at the Futuro Media Group office in New York City. Upon hearing the unexpected disco music, I shyly ask the Emmy-winning journalist what kind of party their staff was throwing. "Oh, it's our song of the day," she explains in her warm, exuberant voice.  

After amassing over 20 years’ experience as a hard-hitting journalist and news anchor for such establishments as CNN, NPR, and PBS, Hinojosa founded the Futuro Media Group in 2010 -- a nonprofit, multimedia organization that uncovers stories commonly overlooked by the mainstream media. Based in Harlem, the organization also seeks to celebrate Latino art and culture, and encourage cross-cultural dialogue and understanding. The Futuro Media Group currently produces Latino USA, an hour-long weekly radio show that takes a critical look at current events and cultural developments from multiple Latino perspectives.

"We're very serious journalists here. What we're doing here is not just a job, it's really a mission to change the conversation and speak out about who we truly are in the United States of America," says Hinojosa. "As media disruptors, we are seeing some really difficult parts of the world and of the country...it's hard, it's scary, it's risky, there's no path...so we try to keep a really supportive environment here and that helps to save ourselves."

Latino USA has covered stories ranging from Texas border vigilantes to the Haiti-Dominican Republic conflicts and Cuban Organic Farming. In this week’s program, Latino USA collaborates with Hyphen to look at relationships and cultural intersections between Latino and Asian American communities with podcasts that discuss Latino-Asian American Political Collaborations, both groups’ positions in the “Racial Middle” in the black-white binary of racial discussions, food intersections, Affirmative Action in California, Cambodian Gangs of Long Beach, and Undocumented Students at UC Davis. The program also features artist Shizu Saldamando, Japanese salseros, and activist Marge Taniwaki.

The collaboration with Hyphen to seek commonalities between Latino and Asians in America is but one of Hinojosa’s pioneering efforts. Indeed, her career spans a series of firsts, such as becoming NPR’s first Latina correspondent, and PBS’s first woman to anchor and executive produce a national news series. Highlights among her countless awards and honors include the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Reporting on the Disadvantaged, induction into the Paley Center of Television and Radio Women Hall of Fame, and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Leadership Award.

But when asked about her proudest moment, Hinojosa focuses on the present: “I have such proud moments every week. We just got off the phone with a man from a small town three hours north of Minneapolis who is scheduled to be deported tomorrow. And he committed no violent crime. His only crime was putting a different name in his job application,” she says. “Twenty-two years in the country, four kids, owned a house, always been employed. I’m proud that he was so thankful that we even knew who he was, that we even picked up the phone to speak to him.”

Such welling compassion and courage to speak her conviction on volatile topics such as immigration reform might be what distinguishes her most from a host of many other emotionally detached journalists who shy away from expressing their honest opinions. Hinojosa often expresses sympathy for her interviewees, she has cried with them as they told her their stories, she speaks to them always as a kind friend. In past episodes I’ve watched of Maria in action, she demonstrates how the humanity in all of us should always surpass our differences. In this way, she not only functions as a reporter, but as a guide to the realization of deeper truths and galvanizer of social action.

To stay sane and grounded, Hinojosa admits her regular habit of self-coaching: “I talk to myself a lot in my head because I do understand the fact that what's happening now in this country is going to be written about in the history books as a transformative, historic moment,” she says. “And I've studied enough history to understand that it is individuals who either lead movements or get involved or do things who can actually make a difference… What [my team and I] are really doing is helping to change the narrative of the country.”

Born in Mexico City to a physician father and social worker mother, Hinojosa grew up in Chicago. She received her B.A. in Latin American Studies and political economy from Barnard College, where she discovered her love of radio when creating and hosting her first music program. She lives in Harlem with her husband, the artist German Perez, and their teenaged son and daughter.

Beginning this Fall, Hinojosa’s Futuro Media Group produced and launched America By The Numbers, a new PBS series that consists of half-hour episodes on American communities facing dramatic changes from shifting demographics. The series broadcasts on Saturdays after PBS NewsHour Weekend (check local listings). Among the most memorable for Hinojosa was the “Island of Warriors” episode, which reports on the total absence of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals in islands like Guam and the dire lack of health resources for Pacific Islanders despite their disproportionately high armed forces recruitment numbers and casualties. “It’s heartbreaking,” Hinojosa says. “I ended up getting PTSD when I was covering 9/11 for CNN…and I never expected to find myself talking and sharing my experiences with Guamanian American vets who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and feeling absolute sisterhood, brotherhood with people who are completely forgotten... It was very powerful.”

The next installment (to air this Saturday, November 8th) will be the “Pass or Fail in Cambodia Town” episode, about Cambodian gangs in Long Beach, CA. “I had never had an opportunity to report on this community,” says Hinojosa. “The fact that we’re talking about second-generation Cambodian Americans battling some of the same issues that their parents and grandparents faced when they first came here as refugees is a problem. Not just for them but for all of us as a country that is supposed to be welcoming in principle to refugees.”

When asked about what advice she would give to young people aspiring toward a career in journalism, she responds with no hesitation: “My message is to never allow themselves to believe that they are invisible. We consume so much media but don’t see ourselves reflected that we can begin to assume and internalize that we don’t fit in and we’re not part of the group, and for young people, that can be really disempowering, " she says. "Find the team that’s going to back you up, that's going to believe in you, that’s going to say ‘Go for it.’ And never stop trusting that gut that’s telling you what’s really true. Our young have to learn to convince themselves to own their power and their own voice.”

See more at: hyphenmagazine.com

Organized with consulting support from the Sundance Institute, the Latino Screenwriting Project is an annual 3-day workshop designed to support U.S. based Latino writers and filmmakers working on independent feature narrative screenplays.
Four screenwriters will be selected to participate in an intensive workshop that will include panels, screenings and one-on-one feedback sessions under the mentorship of Sundance Lab Advisors all taking place during the San Antonio CineFestival, the nation's longest running Latino film festival, February 25 - 28, 2015.

The submission procedure is a two step process. First we will review the first 10 pages of the submitted screenplays and the all accompanying materials. A group of finalists will then be notified and asked to submit the FULL SCREENPLAY within 10 days of notification.

Deadline to apply is: November 14, 2014

APPLY NOW!

Robert L. Johnson

 By Tambay A. Obenson | Shadow and Act

Robert L. Johnson's RLJ Entertainment Inc. today announced the launch of UMC - Urban Movie Channel, a digital channel that will feature "urban-themed"  movies.

UMC can be found at: www.urbanmoviechannel.com.

Johnson is, by the way, the founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET - at the time of its launch, the first cable television network aimed at African Americans), which he sold to Viacom many years ago for a tidy sum, making him one of a tiny handful of black billionaires in the USA. 

Johnson, now the Chairman of RLJ Entertainment, said on UMC’s launch, "As founder of BET, I have gained a deep understanding and knowledge about the African American and urban consumer and the entertainment content that appeals to them. UMC was designed so that the African American and urban creative community could directly reach consumers in a way that removes many of the restrictions associated with the legacy content development and distribution models. As more video is consumed over broadband, we believe that we can quickly become the preeminent provider of quality urban entertainment to what has largely been an underserved, yet highly engaged audience. I am convinced that urban consumers will gravitate to the economic and entertainment value proposition of UMC and that the creative community will embrace UMC as the best way to reach their loyal fans and benefit financially from showcasing their outstanding work product."

UMC will launch with a free trial period for subscribers through February 4, 2015, and with a suggested retail price of $4.99/month or $49.99/year thereafter, but with a special limited time introductory pricing of $2.99/month or $29.99/year to start.

Programs previously released by RLJE under the One Village brand will be incorporated into UMC’s library, which will also include titles from RLJE’s existing Image independent feature film line. 

Miguel Penella, CEO of RLJE stated, "As one of the largest independent distributors of entertainment content with nascent propriety streaming channels like Acorn TV, we are uniquely positioned to fulfill the vision of our chairman and deliver to the urban audience an unprecedented library of high quality video content. We are confident in RLJE’s ability to acquire, distribute, and monetize existing and original content that will appeal to the urban community across the growing number of distribution platforms."

Among the titles launching are live stand-up performances featuring Kevin Hart, Jamie Foxx, and Charlie Murphy; documentaries "Dark Girls" and "I Ain’t Scared of You: A Tribute to Bernie Mac;" the feature films "All Things Fall Apart" starring 50 Cent, Mario Van Peebles, and Ray Liotta; and "The Suspect" starring Mekhi Phifer. Bestsellers include the stage play production of "What My Husband Doesn’t Know" by David E. Talbert. 

Traci Otey Blunt joins RLJE as Corporate Executive Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Affairs and will oversee the company’s marketing, public relations and investor relations, as well as the promotion of the UMC channel.

"I am confident that with Traci joining the RLJE management team, her expertise will be beneficial to the company as a whole and help our strategic launch of UMC," said Penella. "She will promote the channel and grow its subscriber base by building new and cultivating existing relationships which will ultimately have a strong impact on RLJE’s digital platforms," he concluded.

Among RLJ Entertainment's holdings are Acorn, Image, One Village, Acacia, Athena, and Madacy brands. The company owns, produces, and exploits intellectual property rights in various formats, including DVD, Blu-ray, digital, cable and satellite broadcast, VOD, streaming video, downloading, and sublicensing.

Check this out on Indiewire.com

Jere Keys/Flickr

By Michael Chaney | Indiewire

Your vision has come to fruition. You’ve edited. You’ve watched your footage closely. You like what you see. A lot.

The home stretch of completion is a blissful (and sometimes painful) time for a filmmaker. But take a step back before you start sending your movie out to film festivals. You might be missing something. As a film professor, part of my job is to overanalyze the overlooked to best equip students for careers. And filmmakers today are constantly forgetting these important realities:

You need to master the short before the three-hour opus.

There’s usually pushback when I use the word "short," especially from young filmmakers raised on feature films. But practicing brevity is the best thing you can do to your work. Good storytelling is about distilling ideas into something distinctly cinematic. Making good shorts hones your skills at doing so. Only after you master shorts are you ready to tell the saga brewing in your head.

You need to cut some more.

As the idiom goes, "get in late and get out early." That means your 20-minute senior project is too long. No, really. Trust me. It is. And that means it's going to get cut from more festivals than you can shake a boom pole at. Festival programmers get inundated with submissions. They're looking for quality work that knows how to capitalize on the economy of the short film format. If you can't cut your short to less than 10 minutes you're making things harder on yourself.

During last week's Savannah Film Festival in Savannah, Georgia, I had a chance to catch up with several of my former students from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) who have graduated and are succeeding in the film industry. They echoed my thoughts exactly. 

Jett Steiger, class of 2006, has been making the Sundance rounds for years now. A thesis film he worked on called "The Execution of Solomon Harris," about the botched execution of a death row inmate, was originally a 20-page screenplay. His team had to work hard to cut to the core of the premise and turn that into an eight-minute movie. But it paid off and the film was selected by Sundance. It was his team’s first film to make it in, opening the door for future submissions.

Savannah Film Festival

Don't discount small festivals or small projects.

You should send your submission to Sundance and Cannes. And everywhere else, too. 

There are many film festivals today and that means there's at least one for your film. Don't discount a festival because you think your work is somehow better than it, or because it's small or in some remote location. Remember, you made a film to tell a story to an audience. And people in the industry take notice of the festival circuit. Many smaller festivals are revered for their quality programming and often send their winners to larger organizations, giving them clout.

This is a good practice in all areas of filmmaking, not just festivals. You should take on whatever work comes your way with a positive attitude. Alexander Hammer, another SCAD graduate, put a stellar work ethic first when tasked with grunt PA work that a lot of beginning filmmakers prefer not to do. During one of those projects, he made a positive impression on the right person and now works with Beyoncé and Jay-Z on much bigger projects, including music videos watched by millions.

Every project can return dividends if you respect the craft and invest enough love into it.

Don't forget why you’re doing this.

Your films should have meaning for you. Sending out work you hate is like going to a job interview in a thrift store bathrobe. Nothing is as obvious to outsiders like apathy. So don’t let your festival pursuits burn you out and make you lose heart. It shows. Have fun and make art. Focus on the project and worry about distribution later. Great work always finds an audience.

Don’t let missing parts hold you back.

This is important for anyone still in preproduction. Don’t give up. Get the film in the can. It's dangerously easy, especially for beginner filmmakers, to quit because their team is piecemealed or they don't think their equipment is up to par. Waiting on the stars to align could take forever. Do your pre-pro work and communicate your objectives with the team you have. Show them respect and gratitude for their input.

If you know you have holes, patch them. If you can't find a gaffer, review lighting options with your DP until you have a working solution. Giving up in the face of shortcomings means your team will give up too. The drive to move forward with a clear vision has a tendency to be contagious. If you show passion for your project then you stand a chance that someone from the outside will take notice and want to collaborate, solving whatever shortcomings you thought you had to begin with.

Now go make a film. And don't forget to keep it short.

Michael Chaney is professor of film and television at SCAD. He has been directing short films and creating time-based media for over 25 years. His work has been screened at numerous international film festivals and exhibitions. His time at SCAD has focused on crafting a creative environment for students to collaborate and learn from each other through multiple disciplines.

Check this out at IndieWire.com

Robert Hardy @ NoFilmSchool.com

Few cinematographers are as universally lauded and professionally respected as Emmanuel Lubezki. After watching this video tribute from Vimeo user Borealisk, you'll see why.

Questionable music choices aside, this video brilliantly showcases a few of Chivo's trademark stylistic tendencies. First and foremost is his absolutely stunning command of natural light. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the past three Terrence Malick films (there are more in the works). When you add the improvisatory and oftentimes playful camera work of these films to the complex, beautiful natural lighting, you get some of the most visually arresting images in contemporary film.

Then there's his work with visionary director Alfonso Cuaron. These films showcase Chivo's ability to craft complex, yet immersive long takes that guide viewers through unbeknownst cinematic worlds. In 2006, it was the intricate handheld and crazy car rigs that led viewers through the war-torn landscapes of Children of Men. In 2013, Lubezki, alongside an incredible visual effects team, pioneered new types of hybrid cinematography to craft the most realistic portrait of outer space ever seen in Gravity.

Chivo has already accomplished some amazing cinematic feats in his 30 year career. However, the fact that he's only 50 years old hopefully means that we'll be witness to a hell of a lot more in years to come. 

Check this out on NoFilmSchool.com