The Sundance Institute announced today the launch of the Latine Fellowship and Collab Scholarship, a new program intended to bolster U.S. Latinx representation in independent media. These two programs supporting 11 emerging Latinx artists represent a unique opportunity for these filmmakers, bringing not only more visibility but resources for these creators.
The Sundance Institute Latine Fellowship is a year-long multi-disciplinary fellowship experience beginning this month, offering creative and practical support and unrestricted non-recoupable grants of $10,000. This program hosts six emerging Latinx artists that the Institute has previously supported.
The Sundance Institute Latine Scholarship is designed for those without prior engagement with Sundance. The program will happen virtually through a live online course on Sundance Collab. They will receive support to connect with the institution staff and artists and constant feedback about their projects. In addition, the scholarship will get a Creator+ Sundance Collab membership to access the Master Classes in the video library and exclusive networking and community-building events on the platform.
The artist and projects 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.
Luna X. Moya (director/producer/editor/DP) with What the Pier Gave Us (USA): 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.
Marilyn Oliva (director/producer) with Chalate (USA): A grandmother teaches her young granddaughter valuable life lessons while they make ends meet selling what they can in the small market of Chalatenango, El Salvador.
George Pérez (creator/writer) with Los Cubanos (USA): 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.
Cat Rodríguez (divisor/performer) with Untitled Bikini Bodybuilding Project (USA): A hybrid theater and live-stream performance that uses a female bodybuilding competition as an allegory for questions about race, class, gender, and climate.
The artists selected for the 2022 Sundance Institute Latine Collab Scholarship are:
Shireen Alihaji (writer/director) with Blue Veil (USA): 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.
Erin Nene-Lee Ramirez (writer/director) with Love, as an Illusion (USA) : 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.
Fabiano Mixo (writer/director) with A Home of My Own (USA): 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.
Maggy Torres-Rodriguez (writer) with Cherries (USA): 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.
Mathew Ramirez Warren (director/producer) with Weed Dreams (USA): 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.
