Latinxs continue to be severely underrepresented from film, broadcast television and streaming in front of and behind the camera. This is documented in the UCLA Hollywood Diversity Reports which explore relationships between diversity and the bottom line in the Hollywood entertainment industry.
Focusing on issues of labor, employment and representation, this panel seeks to consider the institutional, structural and societal transformations needed to advance Latinx representation in Hollywood. Panelists include filmmaker Alex Rivera, writer and filmmaker Diana Peralta, editor-in-chief Cristina Escobar of LatinaMedia.Co and Ana-Christina Ramón, inaugural director of the Entertainment and Media Research Initiative (EMRI) at UCLA.
Registration is required. RSVP via eventbrite.
Panelists:
Cristina Escobar is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of LatinaMedia.Co, a digital publication uplifting Latina and gender non-conforming Latinx perspectives in media. A member of the Critics Choice Association and the Latino Entertainment Journalists Association, she's a Rotten-Tomatoes-approved critic who writes at the intersection of race, gender, and pop culture. Adding to her bylines in outlets like the A.V. Club, Glamour, NPR, Refinery29, Remezcla, TODAY, and Vulture, Cristina is also a regular contributor to Latino Rebels, POPSUGAR, and Roger Ebert. She lives in Santa Fe with her husband, two kids, and rescue dog.
Diana Peralta is a Dominican-American writer, director, and producer from New York City. Her debut feature film, DE LO MIO (Criterion Collection), had its world premiere as the closing night film of BAMcinemaFest in 2019 and was initially distributed by HBO. Diana was featured in Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film". She is in development on her second feature, NO LOVE LOST. She also wrote and developed an original TV pilot in partnership with showrunner Tanya Saracho and Universal Content Productions (UCP) through the Ojalá ignition Labs fellowship. Diana currently teaches directing at Columbia University's Film MFA program. Aside from her film work, she has worked as a creative producer in advertising for 9+ years.
Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón is the inaugural Director of the Entertainment and Media Research Initiative (EMRI) at UCLA. The initiative is housed in the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE). Dr. Ramón is a social psychologist who has worked on social justice issues related to equity and access in higher education and the entertainment industry for about two decades. As the founding director of EMRI, she manages the research initiative, which produces the UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report series, and additional research projects on entertainment and media. She is now the lead author of the bi-annual Hollywood Diversity Report. She co-edited a book (with Dr. Darnell Hunt) titled Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities (New York University Press, 2010). She is the inaugural Latino Film Institute Scholar. Dr. Ramón has a B.A. in psychology from Stanford, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Alex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker whose work explores themes of globalization, migration, and technology. His first feature film, a cyberpunk thriller set in Tijuana, Mexico, ‘Sleep Dealer,’ won multiple awards at Sundance and Berlin. Rivera’s second feature, a documentary/scripted hybrid set in an immigrant detention center, ‘The Infiltrators,’ won the NEXT: Audience Award and the Innovator Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, and was released theatrically in the U.S. Rivera’s work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, Creative Capital, the Open Society Institute, and many others. He is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow and an Associate Professor of Filmmaking Practice at ASU's Sidney Poitier New American Film School.