Latino Producers Work to Open Channels of Communication

Lisa Navarrete stood outside an overcrowded ballroom on the third floor of San Francisco’s downtown Holiday Inn and proudly proclaimed the weekend’s independent Latino producers’ conference a rousing success.

Never mind the fact it hadn’t started yet.

“Just the fact that everyone’s here is a success,” said Navarrete, deputy vice president of the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest constituency-based Latino organization and one of six groups that convened the convention. “Some of these people have never been in the same room together. Some of these people have never seen each other.”

By early Sunday afternoon, however, the 250 delegates to “The Future of Latino Independent Media: Public Television and Beyond” had more to celebrate than just togetherness. After three days of sometimes raucous debate, frequent pointed discussions and numerous tense exchanges, they emerged united behind the call for the creation of a first-of-its-kind national advocacy group “to promote the advancement, development and funding” of Latino programming in television and film.

“The conference was a tremendous achievement,” said Chon A. Noriega, an associate professor of film and television at UCLA and one of the driving forces behind the meeting. “We had to show we could get beyond those tensions and conflicts. This is the first step toward building a Latino producer constituency.”

The national community of Latino producers--which is divided by geography, genre and a wide range of long-simmering personal disputes--hasn’t staged a national convention in more than 20 years. And while the participants at this weekend’s convention were overwhelmingly young--more than half were under 35--they made up an eclectic group, including Gregory Nava, who has directed big-budget theatrical releases such as “Selena” and “My Family/Mi Familia,” experimental Super 8 iconoclast Willie Varela and many others who have never presented a frame of film outside a college classroom.

Meeting Timed to CPB

Gathering in Town

But the unity broke down along old, worn battle lines when it came to who should represent Latinos before the tax-supported Corp. for Public Broadcasting, the largest single source of funding for programming on public television. The producers’ group intentionally scheduled its convention for the same weekend as CPB’s annual meeting, which took place 12 blocks away and featured an agenda heavy on networking and the transition to digital television. But there was limited interaction between the two conventions, with CPB President Robert T. Coonrod making a brief appearance before the Latino producers and actor-producer Edward James Olmos giving an impassioned luncheon speech before the CPB.

And while the Latino producers’ conference was ostensibly convened to discuss larger issues, such as the underrepresentation of Latinos in mainstream TV and the world beyond public television, the real impetus behind the meeting was the CPB’s controversial decision 15 months ago to cut off funding for the National Latino Communications Center, the main liaison between the CPB and the Latino programming community and one of five minority consortiums approved by the government to disburse public money to support diverse programming. The CPB made that decision, as well as the decision to form the Latino Public Broadcasting Project, headed by Olmos, as an interim replacement, without consulting the producers who depend on both groups to help develop their work.

While the CPB awards just $650,000 a year in programming funds to each of the five minority consortiums--less than 0.3% of the nonprofit corporation’s annual budget--the imprimatur of a CPB grant can make it easier for a producer to shake loose funding from other sources.

Public Television Both

a Boon and a Frustration

And while public television has historically provided a home for independent producers, it’s increasingly become a source of frustration--if not irrelevance--to many filmmakers. Only six producers present said they have received financial support from CPB, and there have been no CPB-funded Latino projects in the two years since the funding was halted.

Nevertheless, the ability to control those funds and decide who gets the grants carries a great deal of power in the producer community, and the conference was split over who should get that power. After failing to reach a consensus, the Olmos-led Latino Public Broadcasting Project and the newly formed Latino Programming Coalition--composed of the Assn. of Hispanic Arts of New York, San Francisco’s Cine Accion, the Washington-based National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts and the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center of San Antonio, Texas--promised to file competing proposals to CPB for the right to direct the Latino programming consortium.

Other groups, including some from within the Public Television Network, are also expected to file applications for the three-year contract during the next month. The CPB is scheduled to award the grant by September, and while the producers’ sentiment could play a factor in that decision, a popular vote won’t determine the winner, said Coonrod.

“There’s got to be somebody that takes the responsibility,” Coonrod said. “And there’s got to be somebody who says we’re going to evaluate the performance too.”

Two hours after the conference formally ended, Coonrod appeared at an unscheduled and hastily called meeting of some 30 Latino producers--including Olmos and representatives of the Latino Programming Coalition--to endorse the creation of the advocacy group and to pledge a new relationship with the Latino producer community.

“We’ve been trying to get to this day for a long time,” he said. “We will have our differences and we will have our disagreements. But if we can resolve our differences in the spirit that you displayed here today, we can move forward.”

Although some organizers cautioned it may be three to five years before the newborn advocacy group begins to effect real change, the unanimous call for its formation was seen as an important first step. Many conventioneers pointed to next fall’s prime-time network television lineup--which on the four major networks of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox includes 26 new shows but none with leading roles or plot lines featuring people of color--as evidence that Latino producers have to move beyond public television and into other arenas, including network television, cable TV and even politics to truly impact the status quo.

“There is no Latino Jesse Jackson. There is no Latino NAACP,” argued Harry P. Pachon, president of the Claremont-based Tomas Rivera Policy Institute. “So this organization needs to fill a void.”