Latino Visibility: Ever Important and Always a Challenge

I’ve got a question for Jason C. Johansen after reading his Counterpunch article, “Why Latinos Should Depict Latino Experience” (Nov. 22). The lack of a variety of Latino characters in TV and film is certainly a complex problem, and I don’t have any solutions. I wonder, however, if slamming David Riker’s film “La Ciudad” as simply being a reminder to “Latino talent of the lack of opportunity to dramatize lives they’re much more familiar with than Riker is” makes sense.

Had Riker been Latino, would he have made a better, more insightful film? Probably. But as it stands, “La Ciudad” is, in my opinion, an excellent film that audiences, Latino and non-Latino alike, respond to, and I think it’s good that it got made. I didn’t take the film as a depiction of the entire range of the Latino experience--I saw it as a work of art that shows the desperation and loneliness of people at the lowest rung of the economic ladder, like George Orwell’s novel “Down and Out in Paris and London.”

Moreover, I’m not sure that “lack of opportunity” applies in this case. Riker made this film over a five-year period on a low budget. Nobody gave him an opportunity.

ADAM GOTTSCHALK

Los Angeles

It is amazing to me, and perhaps a testament to the limited opportunities available to Latino filmmakers, that “La Ciudad” is a film that the Latino film community has championed. Surely there must be better Latino films out there? Say it ain’t so.

RICK CIPES

Bel-Air