SUNDANCE SPOTLIGHT

The 2026 Sundance Film Festival will shine a long-overdue national spotlight on one of the most influential cultural architects in American history: Luis Valdez. With the world premiere of American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez, Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) cements Valdez’s towering legacy as a revolutionary artist who transformed theater, film, and the visibility of the Mexican-American experience—while also affirming the vital role of public broadcasting in preserving Latino cultural memory.

Directed, written, and produced by David Alvarado, American Pachuco is far more than a biographical documentary. It is a cultural reckoning—charting how Valdez reshaped the American stage and screen by insisting that Chicano stories were not peripheral, but central to the national narrative.

From the Fields to the Forefront of American Theater

Valdez’s story is inseparable from the Chicano Movement itself. In 1965, alongside the United Farm Workers, he founded El Teatro Campesino, a theater company born not in traditional playhouses but in the fields—using satire, music, and performance as tools of protest, education, and empowerment for farmworkers demanding dignity and justice.

That radical foundation led to one of the most consequential theatrical moments in U.S. history. Zoot Suit originated at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, where it became an undeniable hit, electrifying audiences with its bold fusion of American Latino music, movement, history, and political urgency. The production was so successful that it made history—transferring to Broadway in 1979, marking the first time a Chicano playwright’s work appeared on the Great White Way.

In a rare and telling testament to its cultural impact, Zoot Suit didn’t simply move east. While one company made its groundbreaking Broadway run, a second cast remained in Los Angeles, where the show continued at the Aquarius Theatre, running for nearly a full year. The dual productions underscored something unprecedented: Chicano theater was no longer a niche movement—it was a mainstream cultural force commanding audiences on both coasts.

Edward James Olmos: A Full-Circle Cultural Moment

Central to Zoot Suit’s legacy—and to American Pachuco—is Edward James Olmos, whose star-making role as El Pachuco was written by Valdez and became one of the most iconic performances in American theater. The role launched Olmos’s career and redefined the possibilities for Latino actors at a time when such opportunities were nearly nonexistent.

Decades later, Olmos narrates American Pachuco not only as a collaborator and witness, but as co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Latino Public Broadcasting, the organization that partially funded the documentary. The symmetry is profound: a playwright who opened doors for an actor, and an actor who now ensures those doors remain open for future generations of Latino storytellers.

“Now more than ever, it’s crucial that we give a voice to our Latino filmmakers and make sure that our stories are heard,” Olmos said. “While these two films are very different, both of them celebrate how art can lift individuals and communities and bring about real transformative change.”

A Definitive Portrait of a Cultural Revolutionary

Winner of the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film, American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez features extensive interviews with Valdez, offering rare insight into his artistic philosophy, political consciousness, and lifelong commitment to cultural truth-telling. The film positions Valdez not only as a playwright and filmmaker, but as a cultural architect whose influence reshaped the American artistic landscape.

The documentary is a co-production of Insignia Films, ITVS, Latino Public Broadcasting, and Firelight Media, in association with American Masters Pictures and PBS, with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It will premiere nationally in Fall 2026 as a co-presentation of VOCES and AMERICAN MASTERS, placing Valdez among the most essential artists ever profiled in the series.

LPB at Sundance: Expanding the Latino Story

Latino stories are foundational to American culture, not footnotes. And at the center of that truth stands Luis Valdez—a visionary who proved that telling our own stories is an act of resistance, celebration, and transformation.With American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez, Sundance 2026 does more than honor a filmmaker. It honors a movement—and a legacy that continues to shape every Latino story told on stage and screen today.

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The filmmakers of American Sons, producer Laura Varela, along with producer and director Andrew Gonzales, skillfully use the video diaries of Corporal  Jorge “JV” Villareal, the young Marine who did not return, which he recorded for his family in San Antonio, Texas. Those diaries serve as the storyteller’s voice of day-to-day life during his tour of duty in Afghanistan; he tragically did not survive.

The film is skillfully edited into a bookend, non-linear, fractured structure that goes from the video diaries to ten years after, with his surviving Marine brothers sharing their thoughts about J. V., their struggles trying to reconnect back into the “real world”, and tender scenes of his family recalling memories of their son, JV Villareal.

The various emotional and haunting testimonials by Villareal’s brothers in arms, spoken in frank,  intimate streetwise vernacular about their PTSD, isolation, alienation, and hopelessness, often rise to the level of working-class, urban free verse poetry. There’s an eloquent urgency to their authenticity that echoes the pain of servicemen from past conflicts and foreshadows what may be awaiting those serving in the military now.

The overarching truth of American Sons is in its honoring and celebration of those generations of men and women who have given us so much and all too often received so little in return.

American Sons also underscores and reminds us of the tremendous contributions and historic participation of Latinos in the U.S. armed forces since the days of the American Revolution to the present.

It is an honorable legacy of our heritage that Latinos are the most decorated ethnic group in the long and storied annals of American military conflicts.

The story of JV Villareal and his Marine brothers in American Sons is an important chapter in the book of that proud history.

American Sons is a co-production of Infinite Warrior LLC, Latino Public Broadcasting, and Black Public Media. Major funding by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and additional support by the Jacquie Jones Memorial Fund. This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding is provided by Bexar County and the City of San Antonio Arts and Culture.

American Sons premieres on PBS on Monday, January 12. Check local listings for time.

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In 2015, six women from La Cantera, a community in the municipality of Guanajuato, established a civil association called MAYOYE. They discovered that the water in their area was radioactive and joined forces to investigate the cause of several girls suffering from a particularly aggressive form of cancer. Their efforts led them to uncover the radioactive contamination of their water supply, which they believed contributed to the deaths of three girls within just one year. This experience transformed them from leading ordinary lives into dedicated activists.

Brother and sister filmmakers Alfredo and Isabel Alcántara chronicle the long, determined, and inspiring struggle of these Mexican women as they confront the patriarchal bureaucracy in their quest for answers in the PBS documentary Age of Water.

The film, shot in the classic cinema verité style, features no celebrity voiceover, narration, or musical score to enhance the dramatic narrative. The story is told simply through the eyes, voices, and faces of all the characters involved, moving the narrative from one act to the next, employing basic storytelling structures and minimal editing.

The collective efforts of the women of La Cantera underscore a long tradition of Mexican women in the vanguard of social justice movements dating back to the 19th century in their fight for education and political participation, their valiant efforts in the Mexican Revolution, events for women’s suffrage, and Chicana feminism and against gender violence.

Mexico now has the distinction of electing its first woman president, Claudia Shinebaum, who has implemented policies to address some of the environmental issues facing Mexico.

Clean water, climate change, and other pressing environmental issues continue to be topics of interest for Alfredo and Isabel.

Unfortunately, our current US administration has gutted the EPA standards for clean water and cleaning up the pollution that contaminates our water system.

Pity, they could learn much from the resolute Mexican women of Lan Cantera and the Age of Water documentary directed by Alfredo and Isabel Cantarra.

The Age of Water is streaming on PBS.org until December.

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I’ve been watching Eva Longoria: Searching for Spain and Pati Jinich Explores Panamericana with mixed feelings. I am on record as being an unapologetic, gushing fan of director, actor, producer, and Latina superstar, Eva Longoria. I followed her through Mexico in her Searching for Mexico series on CNN. If she did a series titled, Eva Longoria: Searching for Lint in Her Coat Pocket, I’d watch it because I’m a diehard fan.

Pati Jinich, best-selling cookbook author and TV host of PBS’s long-running, popular series, Pati’s Mexican Table is another favorite of mine. Jinich has a great on-screen persona, but is there any Latina TV personality who looks more like a gringa than Pati Jinich but sounds more Mexican than she does? I enjoy her infectious charming curiosity  when she ventures out finding new Mexican cuisines.

But so far for my personal Mexican taste buds, Eva and Pati have encountered mostly ho-hum cuisines on their very different food journeys

The historical and gastronomical fact is we Mexicans took Spanish food stuffs; beef, pork, lamb, flour, rice manteca, and citrus and other fruits, incorporated them into an already outstanding diet and turned it into the world’s most popular and delicious cuisine. I don’t see people lining up for tappas and sangria. But you can find snotty, stuck-up Parisians in France eating tacos from Mexican food trucks (holding them incorrectly) and foregoing their overrated wine for good Mexican beer.

¡Hay Dios Mio! We even improved the language they gave us! Who can understand the Catalan Spanish that comes out of the mouths of Spaniards with that lisp, cotton balls  in their mouths, dropping the “S” off the end of words, jamming words together and shooting them out in rapid machine gun bursts of nouns, vowels, and verbs.?

We Mexicans modified, moderated and improved the pronunciation of Spanish so that Mexican-style Spanish is the foreign language of choice to learn and despite what Trump says, it is the “official” language of most of America and the world.

Eva for the most part, seems to be living la vida loca in Spain, but occasionally she puts on a brave face when she is offered unappetizing Spanish food.  But she smiles graciously, takes a small bite, swallows and washs it all down with glasses of wine.

Meanwhile Pati, up in the frozen tundra of North Alaska and The Yukon and living the vida of Nanook of the North, suffers eating seal fat, moose meat and other Alaskan delicacies. Although she has been treated to some delicious Alaskan salmon, crab and other seafood treasures, Pati has also  bravely tasted unappetizing  items like seal fat, whale blubber and moose meat with her typical grace and humor.

Surprisingly, Pati has found Latino culture and people up in the frozen tundra of the Great White North.  Eva, for her part, has taken us back to the Mothership of all Latin American countries and reminded us of the Arab, Middle Eastern and African culinary, cultural and musical influences that flourished in Spain for centuries and were brought to us buy the Spaniards during The Conquest.

But what both these two food / travelogue programs emphatically demonstrate is the influence and global dominance of Hispanic culture that came to Mesoamerica from Spain, took root there and blossomed into the worlds’ most vibrant, colorful and delicious cultural expression.

Gore Vidal once characterized the grater Southwest, but especially the Tex Mex Border from El Paso to Brownsville, as The Occupied Territories.

How about if Eva and Pati team up and do a Latina Lewis & Clark type exploration of The Occupied territories on their next food / travelogue series? They will certainly encounter a helluva lot tastier food and easier to understand Spanish.

Eva Longoria: Searching for Spain – Sundays at 9 PM ET On CNN

Pati Jinich Explores PanaAmerica – PBS, Check for Dates and times

Streaming on Amazon Prime video 

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Emmy Award winner John Leguizamo follows up his brilliant one-man show, Latino History for Dummies (2018), with a Master Class in the three-part historical documentary for PBS VOCES. American Historias: The Untold History of Latinos, Leguizamo’s panoramic, kaleidoscopic landscape exalting the centuries long contributions of Latinos to the Americas is a colorful, dramatic and illuminating cinematic wall mural worthy of Diego Rivera.

American Historias, co-written and directed by Ben de Jesus, proudly chronicles the Latino legacy from the great indigenous ancient Meso-American empires, the Conquest, the Latinization of the Americas and the Caribbean. It reminds us of our military heroism, patriotism, political activism for social justice, our cultural influences in the arts, music, film, theater and not the least of which is our world class cuisine.

Leguizamo points out Latinos are an ethnic mixture with roots in Europe, Africa an  Meso America. We are a complicated multi-layered and delicious ethnic dish like traditional Mexican mole, a blend of native and several ingredients from all over the world.

American Historias bursts, con mucho argullo Latinim like a busted piñata. Each one of the tasty historias is excellent material for movies, like Walkout and Stand and Deliver. We must have our own all Latino streaming network like Netflix. We must have a MEXFLIX streaming network to tell and share nuestro American Latino historias with the world.
American Historias is currently streaming Prime Video, Hulu & YouTubeTV.  You can also watch it free on pbs.org/VOCES

American Historias: The Untold History of Latinos is executive produced by Jill Kirkorian and produced by Alessandra Quest and Belinda Salazar Kizy among

Currently Steaming on Hulu, Prime Video and on PBS.org/Voces. Or to purchase the three hourlong episodes go to Amazon CLICK HERE.

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Written by Julio Martinez

John Leguizamo was born in Bogotá, Colombia but raised in New York City. He has appeared in over 100 films, working as a stand-up comedian, actor, writer and producer. On stage, his one-person play, Latin History for Morons garnered him a Tony Award after 400+ performances, and he followed that up by his PBS special: Great Performances: The Road to Broadway.  Now, working in tandem with acclaimed television director Ben DeJesus, they have co-created PBS’s VOCES American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos, hosted by Leguizamo and scheduled to debut September 27, 2024.

“This project was originally inspired by my stage play, which I created because I was horrified by the almost total absence of Latinos from my son’s American History books,” Leguizamo exclaimed during the recent Television Critics Association press tour.

Leguizamo’s one-man show highlighted the fact that Latinos didn’t just simply arrive here, they’ve been here since 1492. The first Euro language spoken in America was not English, it was Spanish, and the American land mass, from the Mississippi to the Pacific, was, in fact, Mexico until 1840.

“To label John as just the host of this show would be doing him a disservice,” deJesus adds.  “John is the genesis of the whole thing.”  Leguizamo laughs, “I’ve always been a history nerd, especially when it comes to Latin history. I’m like the Rain Man of Latin facts.” 

So all this came to him easily because he’d been studying the subject for the last 20 years. Leguizamo doesn’t just narrate the documentary.  He conducts one-on-one interviews. Instead of just telling this history, he talks to individuals who can help bring the narrative to life.

 “You need witnesses and testimonies,” Leguizamo explains. “Most people are Latin history deniers in this country. You need evidence. We need to have verification to authenticate what we’re talking about.”

 Leguizamo makes it clear that many deniers are entrenched in academia. When he was touring the country with Latin History for Dummies, he learned that U.S. Latino history was banned in Arizona for ten years. This is a state that has a population of 30 percent Latinos. In Texas, educators are allowed to teach Latino history only one day of the year, yet Latinos make up 40 percent of the population in Texas, and represent the majority.

“John Hopkins University did a study and found that 87 percent of Latino contributions to the making of America are not in history textbooks,” DeJesus adds. “So that’s erasure right there.”  

DeJesus believes this special that he and Leguizamo have produced is one of the ways to combat all the deniers. Concluding that, “If we can get this to be a regular series, it can be brought right into the schools.”

When DeJesus was asked to describe a few of the stories that really struck him, they were war stories, particularly the ones from Army veteran Guy Gabaldon. He explains, “Guy Gabaldon’s was a guy from East L.A. who happened to grow up with Japanese neighbors, so he picked up some Japanese. Based on his ability to speak Japanese, he was able — in the middle of the night – to get 1300 Japanese soldiers to surrender.

As for Leguizamo, his happiest and most satisfying interview was easy.  “Dolores Huerta. Oh, my God, she’s so lovely. It was such an honor to meet such a gracious, gentle, generous warrior. And her sense of inclusivity and embracing everybody, even though she’s a fighter, she’s still about nurturing. And that’s who I’d like to aspire to be.”

Leguizamo and DeJesus talked about future projects, particularly dramatic ones and if they thought their projects could have a home on PBS?  “That would be up to the producers on PBS.  It would be great to do it at PBS. There’s so many great stories to be told,” he said with a shrug and a smile. 

Case in point, during their research, Leguizamo and DeJsus discovered Gil Bosques Saldivar to be be an important figure in one of many stories. In World War II, he was a Mexican ambassador who saved 40,000 Jews in Vichy, France.  He hid them in two churches. That’s more than Oskar Schindler saved. Bosques then gave his refugees asylum in Mexico. “It’s an amazing story that needs to be told. It was pitched to the studios but was rejected,” DeJesus exclaimed.

“What is a Latino?” Leguizamo asks rhetorically.  “For the most part, Latinos are of three ancestries — African, European Indigenous. We’re one of the few ethnic groups whose religion, culture, and language were completely destroyed, and yet here we still are, and thriving in America.”

In fact, according to the Latino Donor Collaborative, Latinos contribute $3.2 trillion to the GDP of the United States and as a group, Latinos have the buying power of $3.4 trillion in the U.S.

 ‘We’ve come from so much oppression, yet our superpower is tenacity. We just don’t accept no for an answer,” Leguizamo proclaims.

VOCES American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos

Director and Co-Creator: Ben DeJesus – Co-Creator: John Leguizamo

Documentary Series:  90 minutes

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March 29 10:30 PM (PST) on KLCS

Actress/Producer Julie Carmen makes an appearance on the Everybody with Angela Williamson Show to talk about the music and Legacy of Lico Jimenez,

As Women’s History Month comes to a close actress/producer Julie Carmen talks about her work on the documentary about Afro Cuban classical composer Lico Jiménez, the Ebony Liszt (1851-1917)on the Angela Williamson Show on March 29 from 10:30 – 11:00 PM (PST) on KLCS the Southern California PBS culture and arts show.

Carmen’s documentary, which is currently in production, will introduce audiences to the music and legacy of Afro Cuban classical composer Lico Jiménez, the Ebony Liszt (1851-1917). The film is about child prodigy José Manuel “Lico” Jiménez, a Cuban pianist and composer (1851-1917) and it is told through the eyes of his great grandchildren who meet for the first time on the cobblestones of Trinidad de Cuba.  

Julie Carmen, whose work as an actress caught the world’s attention in the 80’s classic film, Gloria and later on in Robert Redford’s Milagro Beanfield War, is executive producing the documentary and will unviel the trailer on the show.

Carmen whose credits in the entertainment industry are extensive, long ago realized the importance of getting the Latino vote out. As an advocate, in the 80’s she executive produced the first two PSAs for Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, which included Latina actresses, producers, activists and businesswomen. The PSAs went on to win Clio Awards and will be highlighted during the interview.

The documentary is directed by: Isidro Betancourt, Julie Carmen, Executive Producer Producers: Jaime Fernández Cuña, Mario Rodríguez Cuevas. For more info on Lico Jimenez go to http://www.licojimenez.com

For more information on the making of the Lico Jiménez documentary or to contribute, please CLICK HERE

@juliecarmen3 @KLCS @KLCS.org. Www.LicoJimenez.com

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It was Los Angeles 1942 wartime tensions, an influx of servicemen, overzealous authority, rebellious youth and racial strife brought the city to its breaking point. At the center of the conflict were 50,000 sailors, itching to blow off steam before they shipped off to war, and Mexican American teens called “zoot suiters” for the baggy pants and long jackets they wore.

Vividly capturing the moment when tensions boiled over and the city erupted into some of the worst violence in its history, Zoot Suit Riots features evocative archival footage and interviews with a wide variety of eyewitnesses and historians.

The mood in wartime Los Angeles was one of tension and suspicion. Less than a century before, Los Angeles had been part of Mexico but by 1942, Mexican Americans were seen as racially inferior and vulnerable to manipulation by enemy agents. At the same time, Mexican American youth were rebelling against the culture of the tight-knit barrios of their parents. They punctuated their speech with jazz phrases like “hip” and “cool” and took fashion cues from African Americans, favoring the zoot suit’s exaggerated baggy pants and long jackets. Shocked by their outrageous clothes and cocky attitudes, their parents feared they were becoming pachucos or punks. 

On August 1, 1942, 19-year-old Hank Leyvas and a group of his friends from L.A.’s 38th Street crashed a party near a swimming hole dubbed the “Sleepy Lagoon.” Claiming the partygoers had beaten him and his girlfriend earlier, Leyvas was determined to get revenge. A brawl ensued. After Leyvas and his friends left the party, neighbors found Jose Diaz badly beaten and stabbed. His subsequent death was a call to action for the city’s police, for whom Mexican American youth crime had been a growing concern. 

Within 48 hours, a police dragnet snagged 600 young Mexican Americans; Leyvas and 21 others were indicted for Diaz’s murder. When the Sleepy Lagoon trial began in October 1942, it was the largest mass trial in California history. Judge Charles Fricke presided over the case. Overruling objections from the defense, he sat all the defendants together, isolated from their lawyers, and refused to permit them to clean up or change their clothes for the trial. 

Seventeen defendants were found guilty. Leyvas was sentenced to life in San Quentin prison. Believing the boys had been railroaded, a group of intellectuals and Hollywood celebrities — Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth among them — lent their names to the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee.

The Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee successfully appealed their case, claiming that they had been denied a fair trial. The 38th Street boys were released in October 1944 after serving two years in prison. Although the boys were not cleared of the murder charge, the LA authorities decided not to re-try the case.

Decades later, Lorena Encinas, who had been at Sleepy Lagoon, revealed a long-held secret to her children. Her brother Louie and his friends had attacked Jose Diaz and left him to die before Hank and his group even arrived at the party.

Hank Leyvas died in an East L.A. bar in 1971.

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Films about New York’s Latin jazz, a new generation of crime writers in the U.S.-Mexico border, an Afro-Latina running for the Colombian presidency and colorism in Mexico are among the latest round of projects funded by Latino Public Broadcasting. 

The projects explore a variety of stories, with a focus on the diversity of Latino arts and recent reports on the changing political scene in the U.S. and throughout Latin America, according to LPB. They consist of broadcast and digital media projects that will receive monies from three different funds of the nonprofit, which in turn is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Of the 16 selections, three are supported by the Current Issues Fund and the rest by the Public Media Content and Digital Media funds.

Arts programs include The Music Never Ends, a crash course on the history of the Latin jazz scene in the Big Apple featuring the Mambo Legends Orchestra; Border Noir, about the new wave of crime writers chronicling life in the U.S./Mexico border; and Paquito D’Rivera: From Carne y Frijol to Carnegie Hall, a biography of the

Cuban-born jazz legend. 

Other projects are Igualada, about a young Afro-Latina community activist running for the presidency in Colombia; Undocumented Justice, a portrait of the first undocumented attorney to argue a case before the Supreme Court; and Mexico’s Reckoning: A History of Colorism, about the country’s burgeoning movement for racial justice.

“We are very proud to support the extraordinary work of these filmmakers who truly represent the amazing diversity within our Latino creative community,” says Sandie Viquez Pedlow, LPB executive director. “These productions also represent a vital step in addressing the dismal lack of Latino voices in today’s media; our passion and our mission (are) to correct that imbalance. These new projects remind us that there is an endless number of stories about our community that need to be told and we can’t wait to share them with viewers nationally.”

The following is the complete list of projects:

BROADCAST

Untitled Prison Hunger Strike Film
Producer and co-director: JoeBill Muñoz
Funding: Current Issues Fund
Three men look to build new lives after surviving decades of solitary confinement in California prisons. But as time passes, memories of their past still grip them. This film tells how these men and 30,000 others overcome impossible odds and orchestrate a hunger strike to abolish indefinite solitary confinement.

Igualada
Producer: Juan Yepes; director: Juan Mejia
Funding: Current Issues Fund
As Colombia’s streets burn with unrest, one determined woman dares to challenge an entrenched political establishment on the country’s biggest stage. Against all odds, Francia Márquez, an Afro-Latina rural community activist, has launched a presidential campaign where her uncompromising appeal for justice inspires a country by allowing it to dream.

Untitled
Producer/director: Bernardo Ruiz; producer: Gabriela Alcalde
Funding: Current Issues Fund
Part procedural, part true-crime thriller, this documentary tells the story of a history-making collaboration between a forensic scientist from Texas and a group of Latin American students, whose work to identifying the bodies of missing migrants will ultimately change the course of forensic science and international human rights.

Border Noir
Producer: Isaac Artenstein; director: Alejandro Meter
Funding: Public Media Content Fund
A cinematic journey along the U.S.-Mexico border featuring crime writers from both sides, working in a popular genre that reflects multiple and nuanced perspectives about immigration, sexuality, national identity, and globalization, while embracing a search for authenticity and justice.

Mexico’s Reckoning: A History of Colorism
Director/producer: Phillip Rodriguez
Funding: Public Media Content Fund
Helmed by the filmmaker of the docs The Rise and Fall of the Brown Buffalo and Ruben Salazar: Man in the Middle, the film will follow the movement for racial justice in Mexico, capturing the clashes between the overwhelmingly white elites who deny the severity–or even existence–of Mexican racism, and the activists on the ground who are leading the movement to unmask and dismantle it.

The Music Never Ends
Executive producer and director: Mari Keiko Gonzalez; executive producer: Lorraine Galvis
Funding: Public Media Content Fund
This new musical documentary follows The Mambo Legends Orchestra, some of whose members are also former members of the legendary Tito Puente Orchestra. Equal parts love letter and history lesson, the film traces the cultural significance of Afro-Cuban jazz–a fusion of the big band sound of the jazz era with Cuban music created in New York City in the 1940s.

Paquito D’Rivera: From Carne y Frijol to Carnegie Hall
Producer and director: Juan Mandelbaum
Funding: Public Media Content Fund
A look at the life of jazz legend Paquito D’Rivera and his extraordinary journey from child prodigy in Havana, Cuba, to 14-time Grammy-winning international music artist and composer.

The Game Plan
Producer and director: Mylène Moreno
Funding: Public Media Content Fund
The feature-length doc follows young female student-athletes who are leveraging their soccer skills to launch their lives. Pre-Covid-19, the female futbolistas of Orange County’s Fullerton College were already swimming against the tide; since the pandemic, their obstacles have been fully exposed.

TheyDream
Producer and director: William Caballero
Funding: Public Media Content Fund
The animated documentary is a time capsule about the filmmaker’s Puerto Rican-American family. It uses motion-capture technology to creatively visualize the family’s various realities, setbacks, hopes and dreams.

Undocumented Justice
Director and producer: Marlene (Mo) Morris; co-producer: Lidieth Arevalo
Funding: Public Media Content Fund
When ICE threatens 700,000 fellow DREAMers, Luis Cortes Romero fights back–and becomes the first undocumented attorney to argue a case before the Supreme Court.

American Sons
Director and cinematographer: Andrew Gonzales; producer: Laura Varela
Funding: Public Media Content Fund
A decade after the well-documented death of Corporal Jorge Villarreal during the War in Afghanistan, his closest Marine brothers are fighting their toughest battle yet–surviving in the civilian world.

DIGITAL MEDIA

Bertie the Brilliant
Producer and director: Gabriela Garcia Medina
Funding: Digital Media Fund
A young boy takes on chores and small jobs around his neighborhood to raise money for a ticket to a magic show. But when his grandmother loses her job, he is faced with a difficult decision.

Hair
Producer: Brian Khan; co-creators: Lorena Diaz and Wendy Mateo
Funding: Digital Media Fund
When everything beautiful fades, the only thing left is the joy you shared in the community. This is a story about a village contained in a Latina beauty salon, where hair–and spirits–are lifted.

The Kill Floor
Producer, director and writer: Carlos Avila
Funding: Digital Media Fund
When the Covid-19 pandemic engulfs a meatpacking plant in his rural hometown, a young Latino reporter returns to uncover the urgent and deadly circumstances threatening the plant’s workers – including his father.

First It Was My Dream
Creator and cinematographer: Dylan Golden
Funding: Digital Media Fund
After the unexpected closing of New York City’s Mendez boxing gym, Andy Dominguez, an undocumented fighter from Mexico, tries to prove he’s worthy of a World Title shot despite his status.

Punk Is Punk
Producer, director and writer: Kimberly Bautista
Funding: Digital Media Fund
A punk rocker gender-queer parent is hesitant when their child wants a quinceañera, a gender-normative gathering that sets the stage for them to face their estranged, old-school father.

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Two Latinos stars will be the subject of PBS’s highly rated series Finding Your Roots, hosted by university professor Henry Louis Gates, this week. Mario Lopez and Melissa Villaseñor represent a first and a breakthrough presentation for Finding Your Roots as two Mexican American celebrities appear in the same show.

Lopez, who is probably best known for his role in the NBC teen comedy Saved by the Bell, has since distinguished himself as an accomplished director, writer and actor. He hosted Warner Bros.’s entertainment news show Extra for over a decade, winning two Daytime Emmys. Lopez currently hosts NBC’s Access Hollywood.

Villaseñor, a marvelous stand-up comedian and comic actress, is a current cast member on NBC’s long-running hit show Saturday Night Live.

Both Lopez and Villaseñor are proud Latinos who make no bones about acknowledging and honoring their Mexican American heritage. So, what historical facts and unknown buried family secrets will Gates’ investigation into their cultural backgrounds reveal to the two bright lights of Latino Hollywood?

In past programs, Gates has produced documents, records, photos and letters that often evoke powerful emotional responses from his guests. Some guests have had to come to grips with disturbing family histories. Others have found joy and new pride in their family background when an ancestor proves to be someone of importance or a significant accomplishment.

Culturally and ethnically, Mexico is a rich country. Of Indigenous and Spanish roots, the country has also embraced and absorbed cultures from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa, making Mexico a most delectable international menudo. It will be interesting and enlightening to find out what ingredients went into the making of the menudos of Lopez and Villaseñor.
Finding Your Roots airs Tues., Feb. 1 on PBS. Check local listings for times.

Featured Photo: Mario Lopez (Photo: NBC) / Melissa Villaseñor (Photo: Courtesy)

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