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Fall 2003
¡Viva Cinema!
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Ask Dean Rosen
about the future for his many Latino moviemakers, and he talks up his dream
to create a center that would unite theater, film and television. Rosen says
this new Latino Center could forge ties with existing UCLA entities like the
Chicano Studies Research Center, the Latin American Center, the César
E. Chávez Center for Chicana and Chicano
Studies, the Latino Business Student Association and publications like La Gente
and Aztlán. "Our film school must be
both a resource and a link," Rosen explains, to a statewide Latino community
that makes up 33 percent of California's population.
Faculty members
Noriega and Gonzalez are on the same page as Rosen. Noriega's Chicano Studies
Research Center has, in partnership with the UCLA Film and Television Archive,
raised nearly $200,000 over three years to preserve lost or forgotten Latino
films. Noriega is also in talks with UCLA grads Esparza and Nava to bring their
films into the UCLA archives for future generations. Gonzalez, who first came
to UCLA in 1990, started the Chicano/Latino Film & Television Association
in 1993. The group now hosts the largest festival of films made by Latino students
in the nation. Workshops and master classes by UCLA grads like Valdes, as well
as Latino directors like Alfonso Arau, who made the art-house hit Like Water
For Chocolate, are other activities of the student-run association. Gonzalez
says the torch continues to burn among members of each new generation. He praises
recent graduates like Yolanda Cruz M.F.A '03 and Maria Murillo M.F.A. '03, among
others, and current UCLA filmmakers like Alberto Barboza '97, Joel Juarez, Archie
Hernandez, Deana Mesa, John Covarrubias and Aline Franco-Flores.
Barboza, who will
complete his thesis film in a few months, has been active in the Chicano/Latino
Film & TV Association since he entered the M.F.A. program in 1997. As an
undergraduate, he created an independent major that sampled Latin American studies,
fine art and Chicano street theater, where his mentor, Professor Jose Luis Valenzuela,
left a lasting mark. Barboza feels the Chicano/Latino Film & TV Association,
as well as UCLA's relationship with Latino moviemakers, is ever growing.
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