UPDATES
Features & Highlights, Announcements & LFI In the News
- LA Times
Folks attending the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival this year will get a special treat: a preview screening of Jon M. Chu and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights.”
- Be Latina
Hollywood has been a white bastion since it became the center of the movie industry of the United States in the early 1910s and its lack of diversity a sore point since the cameras began rolling. If this year’s Oscars are anything to go by, where the Latinx community shined by their absence, it continues to be an issue. And when Latinx people manage to carve out some degree of representation, Hollywood gifts us with a stereotypical portrayal. We aren’t all named Maria, you know. And we do not all twirl, sing, wield a knife, and cry on cue like if we were an extra in “West Side Story.”
- LA Social Science
Academy Award®-nominated actor Edward James Olmos announced today that the Latino Film Institute (LFI) has named Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón, director of research and civic engagement of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as the inaugural Latino Film Institute Scholar. The award comes with a $100,000 restrictive gift to be used over a two-year period for research designated by Dr. Ramón, including but not limited to, The Hollywood Diversity Report and a dedicated study on Latino representation in Hollywood and the Latino audience.
- Variety
In response to the economic impact of COVID-19, the Native American Media Alliance and Netflix have established the Native Americans in the Entertainment Industry COVID-19 Relief Fund.
- BeLatina
When it comes to representation and diversity on the screen, festivals have a big responsibility. From selection, screening, and dissemination, their platforms are today — especially during a pandemic — one of the fundamental tools for changing the tone of the visual narrative.
