MACEF’s new initiatives includes scholarships, grants and a film festival in 2022
Submission deadline for grant: June 15
By Cesar Arredondo
The lack of representation and negative, reductive portrayal of Mexicans and Chicanos in American film and television has been a long time concern for Jose Luis Ruiz, a Southern California dentist, entrepreneur, and community advocate who hails from Mexico City. Wanting to be part of the solution, he recently launched a program to help fund film and television projects that more accurately and fairly depict those communities.
The Mexican-American Cultural Education Foundation Filmmaker and Television Grant aims to empower Mexican-American filmmakers to tell their stories and shape and improve the perception of their people in the U.S. both on the big and small screens.
Mexicans face a problem in the media that is even bigger than stereotypes, adds Ruiz. “It’s our absence from American film and TV,” he states
Yet, Ruiz complains, Americans often have a limited, stereotypical view of Mexicans as mainly gardeners, janitors, maids, farmhands, nannies, construction and other menial jobs as well as criminals, gangsters, drug traffickers and other negative impressions, all of which are regularly reinforced by movies and TV through the few Mexican characters that get featured. “It’s always been shocking to me,” he says, noting that the Mexican-American reality is different. “Our community is more diverse. We have doctors, teachers, lawyers, astronauts, artists, office and restaurant managers and many more people in great positions.”
His desire to change the perception of his community led Ruiz to start MACEF. He reached out to prominent community leaders such as Alex Nogales of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Emmy Award-winning journalist Naibe Reynoso, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Moctezuma Esparza (Selena, The Milagro Beanfield War), actor Mike Gomez (The Big Lebowski, Greenland), and Bel Hernandez of Latin Heat Media, among others, to be on the Advisory Board for MACEF. In the interest of disclosure, Latin Heat Media is the parent company of LatinHeat.com.
FILM GRANT DETAILS
Also last year, in the middle of the pandemic Ruiz started exploring the creation of initiatives to use media to change the image and depiction of Mexican-Americans for the better. “It was a desire to make a difference more effectively,” he says. That was when the scholarship and grant initiative began.
Currently accepting applications for the film grant, the program offers three grants of $10,000 each to seasoned and upcoming filmmakers who need funds to finish their short films, feature-length films, or TV pilots that could then be presented to production companies, studios and networks. While the program is open to filmmakers of any background, their crews must include at least one producer, writer, or director and one main actor who identify themselves as Mexicans or Chicanos. Priority will be given to projects that present non-stereotypical stories, according to Ruiz. The deadline to apply is June 15.
The filmmaker grant is part of a new multi-prong approach recently announced by the foundation that Ruiz established three years ago to highlight the cultural contributions of the Mexican-American community to this nation, which he says are often unrecognized. Other efforts that also focus on media are a scholarship program for film and TV college students and a film festival.
In addition to the filmmaker grant, MACEF partnered up with two higher education institutions to sponsor scholarships to Mexican-American students pursuing a career in film and TV. UCLA and AFI each will be offering $60,000 in scholarships in the next four years, starting in 2021. “We are now working with USC to start a scholarship program there, too,” he states.
ABOUT THE FOUNDER OF MACEF
A doctor of dental surgery with a diploma from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Ruiz came to the Golden State looking for more professional opportunities. He arrived a few years after graduating from UNAM in the late 1980s, starting his professional dental practice in the city of Burbank and enrolling in some dental university programs through the years such as an aesthetic dentistry mini-residency at UC Berkeley. In the early 2000s, he was hired by USC Continuing Education as a clinical instructor of dentistry, a position he’s held for many years. He also founded the L.A. Institute of Clinical Dentistry & Ruiz Dental Seminars.
At USC, concerned about the lack of Mexican and Mexican-American students in dentistry, Ruiz says he decided to help with recruitment. Progress has been made but the teacher acknowledges much work needs to be done.
Nearly 5 million Latinos live in L.A., with the vast majority of them being Mexican and Mexican American, about 61 percent, according to the U.S. Census. L.A. is also home to the largest concentration of Mexicans outside of Mexico, second only to Mexico City. Census figures show that more than 3.5 million Mexicans call the City of Angels home.
According to the website DataUSA.io, Latinos account for 14.6 percent of USC’s student population but seemingly no specific data is available on Mexican or Mexican-American student enrollment.
Through the years, the dentist also remained concerned about the perception of Mexicans in the United States. Born and raised in Mexico’s capital city, he knew his homeland was a leading nation in Latin America, exporting music, movies and culture to the rest of the Spanish-speaking nations of the Americas. “Mexico is a powerhouse in Spanish-language movies and television,” he says adding, “It’s like the Hollywood of Latin America,”
In the summer of 2022 the MACEF Film & TV Festival will launch in the heart of Hollywood. It will offer another platform for Mexican and Chicano filmmakers to showcase their works once they are completed. The finished projects of the MACEF scholarship and grants recipients will screen at the MACEF Film & TV Festival.
“I’ve realized public image is very strongly shaped by the media, they form opinions of who we are,” explains Ruiz. “So, we are focusing on education, television and film because we want to affect big, massive change.” He concludes, “We need to have more directors, producers and writers to tell our own stories, the stories we need.”
To apply for the MACEF Filmmaker Grant, click here.
To obtain more information on MACEF and its other programs, visit www.mexicanamericancef.org
Featured Photo: Credit: MACEF