Sundance Institute Declares Inaugural Latine Fellowship and Collab Scholarship Members

The Sundance Institute has launched a brand new program, the Latine Fellowship and Collab Scholarship, with the goal of bolstering Latinx illustration in indie filmmaking, in line with a press launch.

Ashley Alvarez, Luna X. Moya, Marilyn Oliva, and Cat Rodríguez are amongst these chosen for the 2022 Latine Fellowship, which supplies six rising Latinx artists who’ve beforehand been supported by the Institute with a year-long, multi-disciplinary fellowship, and affords bespoke inventive and tactical help, in addition to unrestricted, non-recoupable grants of $10,000 every.

The second element, the Collab Scholarship, has been designed for early-career Latinx artists with no prior engagement with the Institute — they are going to be provided Creator+ Sundance Collab memberships, and obtain bespoke suggestions on their tasks together with different alternatives to attach with Sundance workers and artists. Shireen Alihaji and Maggy Torres-Rodriguez are amongst these recipients.

The Institute’s Director of Documentary Movie & Artist Applications, Carrie Lozano, described the brand new program as “a means for us to deepen our ties to extraordinary artists telling worthwhile tales.” Lozano added, “Extra importantly, this new program is a means for them to construct on their craft, transfer ahead with their present tasks and construct a neighborhood with different up-and-coming, various creators.”

Stated Founding Senior Director of Artist Applications Michelle Satter: “It’s our hope that by creating alternatives with these two program strands, we will elevate Latinx illustration with extra visibility, entry to sources, and significant reference to one another, the business and the bigger Sundance ecosystem.”

Bios for the respective Fellowship and Scholarship members are as follows, courtesy of Sundance Institute.

The 2022 Latine Fellowship

Ashley Alvarez (author) and Michael León (co-writer and director) with Crabs in a Barrel (U.S.A): When her talentless frenemy is anointed the “way forward for Latinx voices,” a struggling Latina author units out to sabotage the unearned alternative. After failing to recruit her mates to hitch her campaign, she will get a fortunate break when she learns her rival isn’t precisely who she says she is.

Ashley Alvarez is a Cuban-American actress, author, and producer. As an actress, she’s labored extensively in theater, movie, and tv, most just lately showing on Search Celebration. She is a Sundance Screenwriters Lab fellow and the Sundance Comedy Fellowship recipient. Her brief movie Crabs in a Barrel received the HBO Latinx Brief Movie Competitors. Screenwriting Fellow, Sundance Institute 2022 Screenwriters Lab.

Michael León is a Cuban-American author/director. His brief, Crabs in a Barrel, is an HBO Latinx Brief Movie Competitors winner. His play, The Cubans, had its world premiere at Miami New Drama. He’s the co-creator of the digital play Carla’s Quince, which was nominated by the Drama League. 2022 Sundance Institute Comedy Fellow, Directing Fellow on the 2022 Screenwriters and Administrators Lab.

Luna X. Moya (director/producer/editor/DP) with What the Pier Gave Us (U.S.A): A visually poetic movie about immigrants who fish at a New York Metropolis pier. In 5 vignettes, What the Pier Gave Us lyrically captures the seasonal adjustments of a pier in a yr.

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 movie What The Pier Gave Us began off as a brief and a function is in manufacturing with help from Sundance (2021 Accessible Futures Intensive) and Catapult Movie Fund.

Marilyn Oliva (director/producer) with Chalate (U.S.A): A grandmother teaches her younger granddaughter worthwhile life classes whereas they make ends meet promoting what they will within the small market of Chalatenango, El Salvador.

Marilyn Oliva is a first-generation, San Francisco-born, Chicago-based Latina filmmaker. She holds a Bachelor’s Diploma in Anthropology with an emphasis on Latinx Research and a Grasp’s Diploma in Documentary Media. 2021 Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellow.

George Pérez (creator/author) with Los Cubanos (U.S.A): Compelled to flee Castro’s Cuba in 1980, a husband and spouse make the gut-wrenching determination to desert their daughter. Now, in a menacing and unsure America, they’ll do something to guard their different youngster; turning into drug traffickers and assassins, echoing the previous they left behind.

George Pérez assisted on a TV Information station’s five-part sequence on youngster sex-trafficking, resulting in the rescue of a teen sufferer from her pimp. This led George to shine the sunshine of fact on juvenile exploitation/injustice by means of his writing. 2022 Sundance Episodic Fellow.

Cat Rodríguez (divisor/performer) with Untitled Bikini Bodybuilding Venture (U.S.A): A hybrid theater and live-stream efficiency that makes use of a feminine bodybuilding competitors as an allegory for questions on race, class, gender, and local weather.

Cat Rodríguez werks as a feral actor + director. A co-foundress of Faux Buddies, she just lately carried out within the firm’s unique play Circle Jerk (2021 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Finalist). She considers herself a nomad however all the time names New Orleans and Nicaragua house. 2021 Artwork of Follow Fellow.

The 2022 Collab Scholarship

Shireen Alihaji (author/director) with Blue Veil (U.S.A): Within the wake of 9/11, a First-Gen Muslim teenager discovers her mom’s report assortment and begins sampling. The songs replicate her mum or dad’s migration tales (from Iran and Ecuador) to America, and function a roadmap to Amina’s id. As music unlocks recollections, Amina remembers who she is.

Shireen Alihaji is a Latinx, Iranian, Muslim, Disabled filmmaker born and raised in LA. Her intersections encourage her to create house by means of movie applied sciences. Given how we keep in mind is pivotal to therapeutic, her movies use reminiscence as a contra-gaze to surveillance to uncensor the creativeness and mirror our infinite reflection.

Erin Nene-Lee Ramirez (author/director) with Love, as an Phantasm (U.S.A) : Within the warmth of a New England summer season, a younger Dominican pupil finds himself stirring up the intimate dynamic between a reckless teenage couple as he spends his ultimate days within the US, the place he challenges the {couples}’ concepts of acceptance, intimacy and love.

Erin Nene-Lee Ramirez is a queer, Chinese language-Jamaican and Dominican filmmaker initially from New Hampshire. His work which explores themes of id, immigration, and race, investigates the dualities and contradictions inside society, with the intention to type a extra liberated and collective future. A 2019 NeXtDoc Fellow, Erin is presently pursuing an MFA at Columbia College.

Fabiano Mixo (author/director) with A Residence of My Personal (U.S.A) : When an insomniac handyman comes throughout a prepare within the forest after a flood on the town, he decides it’s time to construct his personal home.

Fabiano Mixo is a Brazilian artist and filmmaker. He has been working throughout movie, prolonged actuality and new media artwork. His work has been exhibited worldwide, together with movie and artwork festivals comparable to Tribeca and the European Media Artwork Pageant. Prior movie residencies embody MIT Open Documentary Lab and Berlinale Skills. Mixo is founder and inventive director of VILD Studio.

Maggy Torres-Rodriguez (author) with Cherries (U.S.A): Internal-city Miami knew the gang as The Cherries – candy Latina vigilantes who protected teenage women by preserving medication off the streets… and butchering drug sellers in the event that they needed to. Ten years later, the retired Cherries are pressured to reconvene with a view to survive in opposition to the resurgence of outdated enemies.

Maggy Torres-Rodriguez is an award-winning Cuban-American screenwriter and editor born in Miami, FL. Upon receiving her MFA from USC’s College of Cinematic Arts in Screenwriting, Maggy labored as an Government Assistant at Lionsgate and as an editor for HBO. She is presently an adjunct professor instructing movie manufacturing and screenwriting.

Mathew Ramirez Warren (director/producer) with Weed Desires (U.S.A): Black-owned companies in Oakland, California attempt to break into the predominantly white authorized Hashish business, by means of the nation’s first ever Hashish Fairness Program.

Mathew Ramirez Warren is a documentary filmmaker and journalist, whose work has been featured on PBS, Nationwide Geographic, The New York Occasions and NBC. As a director, he seeks to inform uplifting tales of cultural turning factors in city environments, inside communities which can be usually misrepresented, stereotyped or stigmatized.