By Julio Martinez
Academy Award-nominated star Edward James Olmos may be the ultimate actor/filmmaker/activist and the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival one of his main causes.
For two decades, LALIFF has been a major platform for both U.S. Latino and Latin American filmmakers to showcase their works in the heart of Hollywood, which not even the pandemic has been able to derail. The fest starts today with in-person and online programs and runs through June 6. The lineup features more than 40 films in English, Spanish and Portuguese, including 18 features, 6 episodic series and 24 shorts. The selections hail from about a dozen countries from the Americas, from the U.S. down to Tierra del Fuego and also the Caribbean.
Olmos is proud of how LALIFF has weathered the challenge posed by COVID. “The pandemic really hit us hard in 2020,” says the Battlestar Galactica star. “We were all scheduled to go (last June). Then the pandemic slammed us in March and everything closed down. So, two days later we created a virtual stream of the whole LALIFF Festival which launched in June 2020 and it worked.” The entire festival was streamed live, the first international film festival to accomplish this, according to Olmos.
Now with pandemic protocols more relaxed, LALIFF is ready to welcome screenings at movie theatres along with a virtual showcase. Olmos is excited about the fest’s 20th edition this week. “It will be even better this year because more people will be able to go into the theatre and experience this live,” he says, noting that the fest doesn’t just serve the Latinos but diverse communities, with people coming from all over the state, country and world. “The key to the whole thing is the exposure all these films will receive from the 2nd of June to June 6th,” he states.
LALIFF is centered in Hollywood/Highland Complex, utilizing Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and two adjoining TCL Chinese Theatres. “We have a compact schedule of professional events, including scriptwriting, distribution, pitching, film scoring and masterclasses,” says Olmos.
The lineup included 18 feature films, beginning with the June 2 premiere of the U.S. feature 7th and Union, written by Oscar Torres and directed by Anthony Nardolillo. The cast features Omar Chaparro and Edy Ganem.
LALIFF will present one on the first in-theater screening of the much-anticipated films of the summer, In The Heights. The Jon M. Chu directed film musical, an adaptation of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Broadway, Tony award-winning stage production, premieres on June 4, In-Person at the TCL Chinese Theater in the heart of Hollywood.
Also screening will be Brazilian feature La Botera (Boat Rower Girl), written and directed by Sabrina Blanco and featuring Nicole Rivadero, Sergio Prina, Alan Gómez and Gabriela Saidon, and Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It, directed by Mariem Pérez Riera and featuring Gloria Estefan, Morgan Freeman, Whoopi Goldberg, Eva Longoria, Justina Machado and Karen Olivo.
Olmos seems particularly happy about the new fellowship series the festival has created with Netflix, which offers $20,000 fellowships to five Latino filmmakers. This year’s fellows are Lorena Durán, Justin Floyd, Kase Peña, Monica Suriyage and Tamara Shogaolu, who will each produce a short film and receive individualized mentorship, as well as one-on-one meetings with industry leaders. Their completed films will premiere at next year’s fest. “This relationship with Netflix and LALIFF is continuing for another three years,” says Olmos.
Netflix will also offer support to the filmmakers throughout the development of their films. The mentors are executive producer Alicia Marie Agramonte, director of development of film at Revelations Entertainment; writer, director and producer Jhonny Hendrix Hinestroza (Candelaria); writer, director and producer Diana Peralta (De lo Mio); producer Cisely Saldana, co-founder of Cinestar Pictures; and writer-producer Oscar Torres (Innocent Voices).
Founded in 1997, LALIFF is arguably the preeminent Latino film fest in the nation and the only one of its kind taking place on the so-called movie mecca of the world. Its website boasts of being “recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its discovery of emerging Latino talent.” The annual event has been home to debut films by Oscar-winning directors such as Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro G. Iñarritu and Pablo Larrain and of movies starring Golden Globe-winning actresses America Ferrera and Gina Rodriguez.
The festival is just a highlight in the prolific career of Olmos, who showed interest in community causes, sports and even politics at an early age. Born in East Los Angeles, he ran for student body president at Montebello High School but lost to future California Democratic Party Chair Art Torres. He also joined the L.A Dodgers’ farm system at age 13 and a rock and roll band at 15.
But when he took classes at East Los Angeles College, he developed an interest in acting.
In the early 1970s, he appeared in many small stage productions around L.A. He finally got his big break when he was cast as El Pachuco in Luis Valdez’s landmark Zoot Suit, which dramatized the World War II tensions between Mexican-Americans and local police in L.A. When the play premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in 1978, it was the first professionally produced Chicano play presented by Center Theatre Group. The production moved later to Broadway and Olmos received a Tony nomination. He repeated his role in the subsequent 1981 film, also written and directed by Valdez.
As he forged a successful career in film and television, Olmos became a crusader for more diversified roles and images of Latinos in the U.S. media as an actor, director, producer and activist.
He gained notoriety for his roles in the crime series Miami Vice in the second half of the ‘80s and also starred in Stand and Deliver based on the true story of math teacher Jaime Escalante, which earned him an Oscar nomination. He then directed, produced and starred in the 1992 drama feature American Me and other landmark works such as The Burning Season. He again gained prominence starring as William Adama in the re-imagined cable series Battlestar Galactica that became a TV phenomenon. Other film credits include the 1982 sci-fi drama Blade Runner and its sequel Blade Runner 2049 more than a decade later as well as Roosters in 1992 and My Family/Mi Familia in 1995.
Since 2018, he’s played the father of two members of an outlaw motorcycle club in the FX series Mayans MC.
Despite the financial rewards of working in commercial films and TV, Olmos became enamored with the great diversity offered by the Public Broadcasting System, appearing in American Playhouse productions of The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca in 1998.
In 1998, he founded Latino Public Broadcasting and currently serves as its chairman. LPB funds public television programming that focuses on issues affecting Hispanics and advocates for diverse perspectives in public television.
Olmos was one of the driving forces that created Americanos: Latino Life in the U.S., a 1999 book project featuring over 30 award-winning photographers that later was turned into a Smithsonian traveling exhibition.
The actor/filmmaker makes frequent appearances at juvenile halls and detention centers to speak to at-risk teenagers. He has also been an international ambassador for UNICEF. In 2001, he was arrested and spent 20 days in jail for taking part in the Navy-Vieques protests against the U.S. Navy’s target practice bombings of the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. In 2007, he criticized the United States government for not cleaning up Vieques after the Navy stopped using the island.
During the course of his career, Olmos has become known not only for his straightforward, uncompromising opinions but also for his droll sense of humor. When the 2004 remake of the popular 1970s series, Battlestar Galactica, was being presented at the bi-annual meeting of the Television Critics Association before the series made its public debut, Olmos calmly stated to the gathered 250 TV scribes, “If you loved the ‘70s version of Battlestar Galactica, you’re going to hate ours.” Olmos just smiled as he heard the collected groans of the show’s executives sitting at the back of the room. Actually, Olmos knew the series would be a success. And it did, running until 2009.
When asked what else is going on in his life, Olmos smiles broadly and says, “You have got to catch my latest film, Walking with Herb. It is a lovely piece of work, also starring George Lopez and Kathleen Quinlan.” Released this year, this comedy is directed by Ross Marks and executive produced by Olmos.