Maylen Calienes, fundadora de Latino Filmmakers
Latino moviemakers and people from the industry gathered during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival on January 25 at Park City, Utah, to celebrate and promote Hispanic talent and debate about the main challenges for Latinos in the film industry. The meeting was produced by Latino Filmmakers in partnership with Hispanicize 2016, and was sponsored by SAG-AFTRA. The event took place at the Indie Lounge in Main Street from 2:30pm until 7pm. During the mixer a Latin American directors panel debated about the lack of diversity and the Hispanic underrepresentation in Hollywood. The organizers also highlighted the best Latinos movies selected by Sundance. “A new wave of Latinos is making history in Hollywood, from Alfonso Cuarón to Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritú or Gina Rodríguez and Eugenio Derbéz” said Maylen Calienes, Founder of Latino Filmmakers. “The goal of Latino Filmmaker Mixer is to offer people sharing the same interests a platform for exchanging ideas, cooperate and improve the market in order to better represent the reality of our multicultural society.” Currently, Latinos amount for 17% of the U.S. population and represent 19% of all cinema box office, making them vital consumers. Despite this, the Latino talent in movies and TV is less than 2% and this number has not increased together with the evolution of the Hispanic population in North America.