Check out the what NALIP's partners are up to this week and stay up to date with changes and new opportunities they are opening up in the industry!

Sony Pictures Television Launches Diverse Writers Program With Sixteen Aspiring Scribes

Sony Pictures Television will link sixteen aspiring scribes with industry professionals and mentors for its six-week Diverse Writers Program. The participating writers will network with industry professionals and be assigned a mentor from Sony Pictures Television’s pool of producers and scribes. Four of them will be selected to develop pilot scripts for both comedy and drama. Learn more and check out the list of selected participants on Deadline.

The Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival Runs June 2nd-June 6th!

The 20th Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival has begun! Get ready for both in person and virtual programming featuring screenings, music, arts, panels, and industry days. Get your tickets for both in-person and virtual screenings over at www.laliff.org!

Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY and Google Create Feature Film Grant for Underrepresented Creatives

Courtesy of Koury Angelo

Ava Duvernay’s advocacy collective ARRAY has partnered with Google to launch a new feature film grant benefiting emerging creatives from underrepresented communities. This partnership grants a $500,000 fund to the selected filmmaker to bring their vision to the big screen. This a huge milestone for Ava Duvernay as her first projects were self-funded and is now able to support other diverse creatives, making this a full-circle moment.

Read more here.

Tribeca & Comedy Dynamics Set Slew Of Stand-Up Specials To Be Filmed At The NYC Festival This Month 

Mega; AP

Tribeca and Comedy Dynamics are re-teaming for a slate of 10 stand-up comedy specials to be filmed at the Tribeca Film Festival, which runs June 9-20 in New York City. Produced by Tribeca and Comedy Dynamics and directed by the latter’s founder and CEO, Brian Volk-Weiss, this month’s slate of specials is part of Tribeca’s expansion into new storytelling platforms and its 12-day celebration to reopen New York and bring live entertainment back to the city. Read more at Deadline.

‘To The Letter’ Highlights Challenges Unhoused Kids Face Learning to Read

School on Wheels’ ‘To The Letter,’ written and directed by Nirav Bhakta as part of the CBS Leadership Pipeline Challenge.

School on Wheels has just shared a new animated short, To The Letter, created by participants of the CBS Leadership Pipeline Challenge. A non-profit dedicated to supporting better education for homeless students, School on Wheels collaborated with the CBS program to create the short about the challenges experienced by a young, unhoused student as she tries learning to read. Learn more about the project and watch it here.

See How GLAAD Shows Being LGBTQ Is ‘More Than Pride And Protest

FLASHPOP/GETTY IMAGES

Getty Images and the media advocacy organization GLAAD have teamed up for another exclusive campaign to better showcase the LGBTQ community. The new effort is aimed at increasing visibility while challenging old, outdated tropes, with the launch of their LGBTQ Guidebook for Inclusive Visual Storytelling for brands and media businesses. This is a direct response to recent research conducted by Getty Images that revealed only 21% of people around the world see LGBTQ people represented regularly, and when they do, those images reinforced harmful clichéd stereotypes. Read more on Forbes.

African women in animation are taking the stage

Courtesy of Cape Town Etc

An award-winning South African company, Triggerfish is working to grow and showcase the involvement of women in the animation industry. As the summit is being offered to non-members, women who may not yet be in the industry professionally but do hold an interest in animation now have the opportunity to step into the scene. The African animation industry will be represented at the fifth annual Women In Animation World Summit later this month. Jinko Gotoh, WIA Vice President stated that,

“we must democratize animation on all fronts: education, art, technology, and industry. I’m proud of the work WIA continues to do. We advocate sustainable change across the globe. Along those lines, we are thrilled to partner with Triggerfish to present this year’s Summit, as they have been doing such tremendous work over the years to diversify storytelling and bring better representation to the African animation industry.”

Read more on CapeTownEtc

‘Salsa Outsells Ketchup’: FX’s John Landgraf, WarnerMedia’s Karen Horne Talk Industry and Inclusion

FX chairman John Landgraf, Karen Horne, senior VP of equity and inclusion for WarnerMedia, and Bing Chen, co-founder of film fund Gold House held a zoom call to discuss diversity and inclusion and how creating programs to fix the problem is just the tip of the iceberg when there are centuries of systemic racism. Landgraf states, " “When you start to raise the voices of different BIPOC communities, you find a lot of trauma. You have to do a lot of listening. It can be a little daunting to take on at the beginning. You start to look under the hood and you find a lot of problems with the engine.”

Click here to read more about their inclusivity discussion.

WarnerMedia and Discovery unveil new company name

Courtesy of CNN.com

WarnerMedia and Discovery have revealed the name that their soon-to-be-combined companies will take once they are fused together: Warner Bros. Discovery. Discovery said the new company will "own one of the deepest libraries in the world with nearly 200,000 hours of iconic programming" and bring together more than 100 brands. Read more on CNN.

CAA to sell majority stake in production firm to South Korea’s JTBC Studios Co.

Courtesy of Apple

Creative Artists Agency said Tuesday that it will sell a majority stake in production company Wiip to a South Korean studio. The Century City talent agency did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, which limits CAA’s involvement in production. 

CAA’s divestment marks a victory for the WGA, which had pushed for major agencies to reduce their stakes in production companies. The union believed those production holdings posed a conflict of interest. WGA had also reached an agreement with talent agency WME for its parent company, Endeavor, to reduce its majority stake in production company Endeavor Content.

Read more on the Los Angeles Times.

"BLUE MIRACLE", produced by Mucho Mas Media, was released worldwide on NETFLIX