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Octavio Paz

Lights. Camera. Acción! Latino filmmakers on the move

Monica Rhor
USA TODAY Hispanic Living
Alfronso Gomez-Rejon, right, directs an episode of the Emmy-nominated American Horror Story.

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's childhood in Laredo, Texas, was one of art and poetry and music, where Mexican boleros and the words of Octavio Paz filled the house. Spanish was the language of home, and the border separating the town from its Mexican sister city of Nuevo Laredo was a fluid concept.

It was also a time of devouring movies — visits to Laredo's theaters, binging on rentals from the Video Hut, discovering films that would change his life, such as Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets.

That cinematic awakening led Gomez-Rejon to a career behind the camera, making him one of a small but growing number of Latinos making a mark in Hollywood as directors, writers and producers. If you go to the movies or watch television, chances are you've seen their work:

  • Alfonso Cuarón's balletic vision of space in Gravity, which earned him a place in Oscar history as the first Latino to win the best director award.
  • Guillermo del Toro's fantastical, frightening depictions of the Spanish Civil War in Pan's Labyrinth and the comic book underworld of Hellboy.
  • Linda Mendoza's lighthearted comedy Chasing Papi and her groundbreaking work directing TV shows such as The Bernie Mac Show, Ugly Betty and 30 Rock.
  • Félix Alcalá's Emmy award-nominated work directing Battlestar Galactica and his regular credits on The Good Wife and Criminal Minds.
  • Norberto Barba's stamp as a director and producer on highly acclaimed dramas, including Grimm and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Director Alfonso Cuarón won Oscars for directing and editing the move Gravity at the 86th Academy Awards in March. He is the first Latino to win a best directing Oscar.

In film, Gomez-Rejon has won praise for his work as an assistant or second-unit director on Julie & Julia, Babel, Eat Pray Love and Argo, and for directing episodes of TV's American Horror Story and Glee.

Latino directors have styles, sensibilities and background stories as varied as the country's Latino population. Mendoza, raised in Detroit, is the grandchild of Mexican Americans from Texas. Barba, the child of Cuban immigrants, grew up in the Bronx. Alcala was born in Bakersfield, Calif. Cuarón and del Toro are both Mexican-born.

For Mendoza, who began her career as a production assistant, the desire to reflect that diversity has been both inspiration and roadblock.

At times, she says, being Latino and a woman has given her an advantage. "If you get an opportunity because you're Latin or a woman, take it. Do the best you can. If you kill it, you get another opportunity."

But too often, film and television producers cannot see beyond narrow Latino tropes: the struggling immigrant, the gang member, the fiery sexpot, the maid, she notes. As a result, filmmakers who don't fit into that mold may have trouble getting backing for projects.

"We're not all the same," Mendoza says. "There's so much more to the Latino experience than just one story."

Director Jesús Salvador Treviño received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 28th Annual Imagen Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel in August 2013.

By taking control behind the camera, Latinos can help render a three-dimensional portrait of the community, rather than one that relies on stereotypes, says Jesús Salvador Treviño, also known as Chuy, a documentary filmmaker and television director.

Treviño recalls being on a set in downtown Los Angeles and seeing no Latinos among the 100 or so extras gathered for a street scene in one of the most Latino neighborhoods in the United States. So Treviño walked the writer over a block and showed him the diversity the cast was lacking.

"Every director brings to the table their own personal life history and experience. We should welcome people who have a different life story," says Treviño, who directed episodes of NYPD Blue, Bones and the Showtime series Resurrection Blvd.

Although Latino representation has improved, a study earlier this year by Columbia University's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race found Latinos make up a small fraction of directors, producers and writers in television and film. Between 2010 and 2013, Latinos represented only 1.1 percent of producers, 2 percent of writers and 4.1 percent of directors in top-10 TV shows. In top-10 movies, Latinos made up 2.3 percent of directors, 2.2 percent of producers and 6 percent of writers.

Training programs are in the works, including at ABC, NBC and HBO. But many aspiring filmmakers also are going outside the traditional Hollywood route to find exposure and backing, Treviño says.

The husband-and-wife team of Jade Puga and Richard Montes created the web series Lost Angeles Ward, a dystopian depiction of the city under martial law. The Internet allowed them to "connect directly with the audience," Puga says. "We are taking control of our own stories."

Independent filmmaker Joel Juarez, who shot his sci-fi feature Generation Last in Mexico for lower production costs, is looking for funding outside the U.S.

"Hollywood wants to repeat what it's already doing. I want to tell Latino stories, but not necessarily the struggling seamstress story," Juarez says.

For Gomez-Rejon, filmmaking is about telling universal stories, a lesson he learned back in Laredo when he first watched Mean Streets, Scorsese's 1973 film about gangsters in New York's Little Italy. "It showed me that movies could be a visual expression of art and deeply personal," he says. And he intends someday to make such a movie about his hometown.

"Laredo is in my DNA, as much as Nuevo Laredo is in my DNA," Gomez-Rejon says.

USA TODAY's Hispanic Living magazine is available on newsstands now through Oct. 25. Follow us on twitter: @usatodaymags.
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