Los Angeles, CA – The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the launch of a new program, the Latine Fellowship and Collab Scholarship, created to have a meaningful impact on Latinx representation in independent media. The program provides fellowships and scholarships to 11 emerging Latinx artists and offers professional development opportunities, virtual gatherings to connect with like-minded artists and Creator+ memberships to Sundance Collab, Sundance Institute’s digital learning space for artists from around the world.
“Latinx talent has always been present at the Sundance Institute but supporting these storytellers across disciplines in a single class of fellows or by providing them with a Sundance Collab scholarship is a way for us to deepen our ties to extraordinary artists telling valuable stories” said Carrie Lozano, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs. “More importantly, this new program is a way for them to build on their craft, move forward with their current projects and build a community with other up-and-coming, diverse creators.”
“Over the years, we’ve seen incremental change in industry-wide representation for Latinx creatives. We’re thrilled to be partnering with the MacArthur Foundation and Board members Lyn Lear and Cindy Horn in our commitment to continuing and expanding the work that’s needed for more substantive change.” said Michelle Satter, Founding Senior Director, Artist Programs. “It is our hope that by creating opportunities with these two program strands, we can elevate Latinx representation with more visibility, access to resources and meaningful connection with each other, the industry and the larger Sundance ecosystem.”
The Sundance Institute Latine Fellowship will provide 6 emerging Latinx artists who have been previously supported by the Institute with a year-long multi-disciplinary fellowship experience beginning in August 2022, offering bespoke creative and tactical support along with unrestricted non-recoupable grants of $10,000.
The second component of the program is the Sundance Institute Latine Scholarship, designed for 5 early career Latinx artists with no prior engagement with Sundance Institute to receive a scholarship so they can attend a live online course on Sundance Collab. The scholarship recipients will get a Creator+ Sundance Collab membership for access to the Master Classes in the video library and to exclusive networking and community-building events on the platform. In addition to that, they will receive bespoke feedback on their projects and other opportunities to connect with the Sundance staff and artists.
The 2022 Latine Fellowship & Collab Scholarships were developed with leadership funding support from Lyn Lear and Cindy Horn, and additional support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The fellows selected for the 2022 Sundance Institute Latine Fellowship are:
Ashley Alvarez (writer) and Michael León (co-writer and director) with Crabs in a Barrel (U.S.A): When her talentless frenemy is anointed the “future of Latinx voices,” a struggling Latina writer sets out to sabotage the unearned opportunity. After failing to recruit her friends to join her crusade, she gets a lucky break when she learns her rival isn’t exactly who she says she is.
Ashley Alvarez is a Cuban-American actress, writer, and producer. As an actress, she’s worked extensively in theater, film, and television, most recently appearing on Search Party. She is a Sundance Screenwriters Lab fellow and the Sundance Comedy Fellowship recipient. Her short film Crabs in a Barrel won the HBO Latinx Short Film Competition. Screenwriting Fellow, Sundance Institute 2022 Screenwriters Lab.
Michael León is a Cuban-American writer/director. His short, Crabs in a Barrel, is an HBO Latinx Short Film Competition winner. His play, The Cubans, had its world premiere at Miami New Drama. He’s the co-creator of the virtual play Carla’s Quince, which was nominated by the Drama League. 2022 Sundance Institute Comedy Fellow, Directing Fellow at the 2022 Screenwriters and Directors Lab.
Luna X. Moya (director/producer/editor/DP) with What the Pier Gave Us (U.S.A): A visually poetic film about immigrants who fish at a New York City pier. In five vignettes, What the Pier Gave Us lyrically captures the seasonal changes of a pier in a year.
Luna X. Moya is a documentary Director and Editor whose work screened at A+E Networks, MoMA, The Shed, BAMcinemaFest, and AFI Docs. Their second directorial film What The Pier Gave Us started off as a short and a feature is in production with support from Sundance (2021 Accessible Futures Intensive) and Catapult Film Fund.
Marilyn Oliva (director/producer) with The Seventh Wave (U.S.A): Timo Espinoza, a second-generation Latino cannabis legacy operator, and survivor of the war on drugs, transitions his family business from the traditional market to the legal market in the upheaval battle of social equity meanwhile competing against wealthy cannabis corporations.
Marilyn Oliva is a first-generation, San Francisco-born, Chicago-based Latina filmmaker. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology with an emphasis on Latinx Studies and a Master’s Degree in Documentary Media. 2021 Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellow.
George Pérez (creator/writer) with Los Cubanos (U.S.A): Forced to flee Castro’s Cuba in 1980, a husband and wife make the gut-wrenching decision to abandon their daughter. Now, in a menacing and uncertain America, they’ll do anything to protect their other child; becoming drug traffickers and assassins, echoing the past they left behind.
George Pérez assisted on a TV News station’s five-part series on child sex-trafficking, leading to the rescue of a teen victim from her pimp. This led George to shine the light of truth on juvenile exploitation/injustice through his writing. 2022 Sundance Episodic Fellow.
Cat Rodríguez (divisor/performer) with Untitled Bikini Bodybuilding Project (U.S.A): A hybrid theater and live-stream performance that uses a female bodybuilding competition as an allegory for questions about race, class, gender, and climate.
Cat Rodríguez werks as a feral actor + director. A co-foundress of Fake Friends, she recently performed in the company’s original play Circle Jerk (2021 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Finalist). She considers herself a nomad but always names New Orleans and Nicaragua home. 2021 Art of Practice Fellow.
The artists selected for the 2022 Sundance Institute Latine Collab Scholarship are:
Shireen Alihaji (writer/director) with Blue Veil (U.S.A): In the wake of 9/11, a First-Gen Muslim teenager discovers her mother’s record collection and begins sampling. The songs reflect her parent’s migration stories (from Iran and Ecuador) to America, and serve as a roadmap to Amina’s identity. As music unlocks memories, Amina remembers who she is.
Shireen Alihaji is a Latinx, Iranian, Muslim, Disabled filmmaker born and raised in LA. Her intersections inspire her to create space through film technologies. Given how we remember is pivotal to healing, her films use memory as a contra-gaze to surveillance to uncensor the imagination and mirror our infinite reflection.
Erin Nene-Lee Ramirez (writer/director) with Love, as an Illusion (U.S.A) : In the heat of a New England summer, a young Dominican student finds himself stirring up the intimate dynamic between a reckless teenage couple as he spends his final days in the US, where he challenges the couples’ ideas of acceptance, intimacy and love.
Erin Nene-Lee Ramirez is a queer, Chinese-Jamaican and Dominican filmmaker originally from New Hampshire. His work which explores themes of identity, immigration, and race, investigates the dualities and contradictions within society, with the intention to form a more liberated and collective future. A 2019 NeXtDoc Fellow, Erin is currently pursuing an MFA at Columbia University.
Fabiano Mixo (writer/director) with A Home of My Own (U.S.A) : When an insomniac handyman comes across a train in the forest after a flood in town, he decides it’s time to build his own house.
Fabiano Mixo is a Brazilian artist and filmmaker. He has been working across film, extended reality and new media art. His work has been exhibited worldwide, including film and art festivals such as Tribeca and the European Media Art Festival. Prior film residencies include MIT Open Documentary Lab and Berlinale Talents. Mixo is founder and creative director of VILD Studio.
Maggy Torres-Rodriguez (writer) with Cherries (U.S.A): Inner-city Miami knew the gang as The Cherries – sweet Latina vigilantes who protected teenage girls by keeping drugs off the streets… and butchering drug dealers if they had to. Ten years later, the retired Cherries are forced to reconvene in order to survive against the resurgence of old enemies.
Maggy Torres-Rodriguez is an award-winning Cuban-American screenwriter and editor born in Miami, FL. Upon receiving her MFA from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in Screenwriting, Maggy worked as an Executive Assistant at Lionsgate and as an editor for HBO. She is currently an adjunct professor teaching film production and screenwriting.
Mathew Ramirez Warren (director/producer) with Weed Dreams (U.S.A): Black-owned businesses in Oakland, California try to break into the predominantly white legal Cannabis industry, through the nation’s first ever Cannabis Equity Program.
Mathew Ramirez Warren is a documentary filmmaker and journalist, whose work has been featured on PBS, National Geographic, The New York Times and NBC. As a director, he seeks to tell uplifting stories of cultural turning points in urban environments, within communities that are often misrepresented, stereotyped or stigmatized.
Sundance Institute
As a champion and curator of independent stories, the Sundance Institute provides and preserves the space for artists across storytelling media to create and thrive. Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, the Institute’s signature Labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. Sundance Collab, a digital community platform, brings a global cohort of working artists together to learn from each other and Sundance Advisors and connect in a creative space, developing and sharing works in progress. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences and artists to ignite new ideas, discover original voices, and build a community dedicated to independent storytelling. Sundance Institute has supported and showcased such projects as Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), CODA, Flee, Passing, Clemency, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Zola, On the Record, Boys State, The Farewell, Honeyland, One Child Nation, The Souvenir, The Infiltrators, Sorry to Bother You, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Hereditary, Call Me By Your Name, Get Out, The Big Sick, Mudbound, Fruitvale Station, City So Real, Top of the Lake, Between the World & Me, Wild Goose Dreams and Fun Home. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
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