Filling Screens With Life’s Inspiration

Playwright and screenwriter Josefina Lopez has seen her share of rejection from Hollywood producers and studio executives. It took 11 years for her autobiographical play, “Real Women Have Curves,” to be made into a movie.

Like many of Lopez’s works, the hit film was based on her experiences growing up in the Eastside neighborhood of Boyle Heights.

On Saturday, Lopez was busy showcasing other Latina filmmakers at her Casa 0101 Theater, a gallery and art space she operates in Boyle Heights. The idea behind the Boyle Heights Independent Latina Film Extravaganza is to build a network of Latina filmmakers and highlight works that counter the stereotypical Hollywood images of Latinas.

All too often, Lopez said, Hollywood has portrayed Latinas as “eye candy” or “hot senoritas.”

As volunteers set up for the film festival, Lopez talked about the difficulties of producing Latina-themed projects and getting them distributed to a wide audience. Often, she said, executives don’t understand certain ideas and there’s a lack of independent financing to develop the projects.

Lopez recalled receiving a cold reception recently at a workshop for female writers when she pitched the idea for a romantic comedy series. It was about a 60-something Latina who works as a radio sex therapist. She falls in love with a conservative talk show host the same age.

The festival, which continues through today, includes more than two dozen independent feature films, shorts and documentaries produced and directed by Latinas. Many of them deal with the daily struggles and triumphs experienced by Latinas reared in the U.S. and those who have arrived here from other countries.

In “White Like the Moon,” San Antonio filmmaker Marina Gonzalez Palmier explores the issues of racism and ethnic identity. The movie’s protagonist is a 13-year-old Mexican American girl in south Texas in the late 1950s who struggles with her identity after her mother bleaches her skin white so she can fit into society.

“Oaxacan Hoops,” a documentary by Olga Rodriguez, looks at how basketball has helped indigenous Zapotec Indians from Mexico keep their traditions alive and build a sense of community in Los Angeles.

When Stephanie Saint Sanchez of Houston heard about the festival, she quickly submitted her short, “La Llorana.” The story is a lighthearted take on a traditional Mexican folk tale about a female ghost that roams from town to town.

“I’m so excited to meet other Latinas with the same goals as me,” Sanchez said. “We all know that it’s a struggle, and are just happy to help each other out.”

Opened four years ago, the Casa 0101 Theater on East 1st Street has become a hot spot for emerging Latino artists. Within the last year, two other galleries have set up shop across the street.

“We’ve basically been there to serve for other people’s pleasure, rather than to serve ourselves,” said Lopez, who recently finished a screenplay for an HBO film about the murders of hundreds of women in the Mexican border city of Juarez.

With gentrification pushing outward from downtown, and several Metro Rail stops planned for Boyle Heights, Lopez and other local artists believe they may be on the cutting edge of a neighborhood renewal.

Crossed by four freeways, and sitting on the east bank of the Los Angeles River, Boyle Heights for years has been perceived as a community plagued by crime, gangs and unemployment.

Historically, the area has been home to a rich cultural and ethnic heritage that mirrors the diversity of Los Angeles as a whole. Named after Andrew Boyle, an Irishman and area landowner, Boyle Heights was one of the city’s first suburbs.

By the 1920s, thousands of Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe had settled in the community. Japanese and Russian immigrants also lived there, as well as Chinese, Armenians and Italians.

About 25 years later, Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants had begun replacing the European immigrants and Japanese, who were taken to internment camps.

Today, Boyle Heights’ predominantly Latino makeup can be seen from the Mexican musicians at Mariachi Plaza to the dozens of colorful murals, including works by some of the pioneers of the Chicano art scene.

At Casa 0101, a new generation of artists has found a place it can call home.

“It’s bringing art back to the community,” said Antonio Tyger Olivas, a screenwriter who grew up in Boyle Heights and has written several straight-to-video movies.

Lopez has held photo exhibits, plays and screenwriting workshops at her art space, a former bridal shop that had closed.

“There’s no shortage of talent around here,” she said.