Latino Public Broadcasting Announces the Recipients of the 2011 Public Media Content Fund

Los Angeles, CA - Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB), a nonprofit 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 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:

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

Producer/Director: Jamie Sisley

Co-director: Miguel Martinez

Category: Post-Production; 1 Episode/60 Minutes

 

Farewell, Ferris Wheel is an examination of the American carnival, endangered due to immigration laws, and the Mexican town of Tlapacoyan, which provides one third of America’s carnival labor.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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, el Jarocho. The documentary traces their journey to preserve and elevate their culture on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border.

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.