Latinos Seek to Improve DGA Status : Unions: New committee will push for the adoption of a mentor program, under which members of minority groups will work with established directors.

Latino members of the Directors Guild of America have formed a formal committee to boost members’ standing in the Hollywood community.

Latinos make up 1% of the guild’s 5,300 director-members, and have typically been passed over for projects that do not have ethnic themes, said Jesus Trevino, the committee’s chairman and one of its founders.

The decision to organize grew out of a series of meetings last year among Chicano and Latino directors, including Edward James Olmos (“American Me”) and Luis Valdez (“La Bamba).

“We began to swap stories,” said Trevino, who is working on “Mathnet,” a segment of the PBS “Square One TV” series. “Not a lot of us were getting work.”

They decided to do something about it.

Now, a year after that first meeting, the group--which has been officially recognized by the guild--is taking its first tentative steps.

The committee’s approach, members say, will be geared less toward agitating and more toward introducing Latino directors to producers and other industry executives.

“We’re approaching the whole situation not from complaining about the fact that there are inequities in hiring Latinos both in front of and behind the cameras,” said Trevino, the committee’s chair. “The best way (to improve Latinos’ status) is to go out and say: ‘I’m here. I’m talented. I can make films.’ ”

The committee’s first big push will be to encourage the guild to adopt a mentorship program, under which not only Latinos, but members of other disadvantaged groups will work with more established directors.

At the same time, members are meeting with studio executives to discuss opportunities for Latinos, and the committee plans to publish a directory of Latino directors.

The committee, along with Chicanos 90--a group of directors who exhibited their work in Mexico last year--and UCLA, is co-sponsoring an homage to the Mexican filmmaker Gabriel Figueroa at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in October. It has organized a retreat for Latino directors and writers, and is in the process of producing a documentary on Latinos in Hollywood.