Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month: Video

This engaging film shows how a dedicated teacher and community organizer in New Mexico brought a colorful, passionate Hispanic dance to America. At the National Institute of Flamenco, founded by Eva Sandoval, viewers watch her students move to the pulsing rhythms of the music under her demanding supervision. Students of all ages spend long hours of grueling practice, some with hopes of becoming professional flamenco dancers. In addition to her work at the institute, Eva works as a professor at the University of New Mexico, where she has created what is considered the premiere course of flamenco study in the United States.

Dolores Huerta is among the most important, yet least known, activists in American history. An equal partner in co-founding the first farm workers unions with Cesar Chavez, her enormous contributions have gone largely unrecognized. Dolores tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Chavez, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the twentieth century - and she continues the fight to this day, at 87. With intimate and unprecedented access to this intensely private mother to eleven, the film reveals the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one's life to social change.

HBO presents a unique glimpse into the vibrant and burgeoning culture of Hispanic America through a series of highly personal video portraits of Latinos who have richly contributed to the fabric of contemporary society. Funny, poignant and irreverent, The Latino List illuminates the Latino experience today, at a time when the Latino population in the US is booming. The Latino List: Volume 1 spotlights a diverse range of notables from music, science, journalism, theater, politics, business, and government.

The Latino List: Volume 2 features interviews with an extraordinary cross-section of Hispanic Americans who represent a variety of professions, disciplines, and backgrounds, each speaking to the unique struggles and triumphs he or she has faced. The film consists of intimate first-person vignettes, with each subject speaking simply and directly into the camera about a number of topics — from the hot-button issue of immigration to childhood inspirations that fueled their ambitions, to the evolving American cultural landscape they helped mold, to the importance of preserving a distinct cultural identity for future generations.

Dubbed “King Tiger” and “the Malcolm X of the Chicano Movement,” Reies López Tijerina inspired Mexican-American college students of the late 1960s and early 1970s to start the Chicano Civil Rights Movement that stressed ethnic pride, ethnic studies, and opposition to police brutality. The Chicano movement eventually faded away, but at the time of the production of this film, King Tiger was alive, living in Mexico, and wanting to tell his story.

Illuminating the untold stories of the Chican@ Movement, with a focus on events in Colorado and New Mexico, the film engages student activism, police repression, and issues of identity, land, and community which still resonate in Chican@ struggles today. Through interviews with those who shaped the movement and rare historical footage, the film offers a window into a dynamic moment in history.

It is the first major documentary series for television to chronicle the rich and varied history and experiences of Latinos, who have helped shape the United States over the last 500-plus years and have become, with more than 50 million people, the largest minority group in the U.S.

Immigration is at the heart of the American experience, and a central part of the long-running democratic experiment that is the United States. So it is that our series intersects much that is central to the history of the United States. The story includes expansionism, Manifest Destiny, the Wild West, multiple wars (Mexican-American, Spanish-American, World War II), the rise of organized labor, the Great Depression, the post WWII boom, the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, globalization, and the effects of multiple kinds of technologies – from the railroad and barbed wire to the internet and satellite television.

America Latina en Video / América Latina em Vídeo / Latin America in Video gives instructors, students, and researchers of Latin American studies, Spanish, and Portuguese a comprehensive and unique perspective on the region. The first of its kind, the collection’s materials are presented in their original language with abstracts and indexing in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Approximately two-thirds of the titles have subtitles.

Letters to Eloisa tells the story of José Lezama Lima, a writer of the Latin American Literary Boom. His novel Paradiso was regarded as a masterpiece, but its homoerotic content set him on a collision course with the Cuban revolutionary government. Relying on letters to his sister in exile, the film speaks of the pain of separation, the Cuban revolution, and the silencing of a literary genius. Distributed by PBS Distribution.

Myth, magical realism, hard-edged realism, fantasy—the literature of Latin America encompasses all these forms and more. This 13-part series guides viewers chronologically and thematically through the region’s varied genres and narrative styles, linking them to centuries of warfare, colonization, and national struggles for independence and identity. Excerpts from influential works are plentiful, while detailed commentary is provided by an impressive array of scholars—including Eduardo Galeano, celebrated Uruguayan journalist; Sergio Pitol, Mexican writer and Cervantes Prize recipient; Doris Summer, professor of Romance languages and Literature at Harvard University; and José Rabasa, professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley. An FFH&S/Tranquilo Coproduction. 13-part series, 45–54 minutes each.