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Join us as we celebrate by highlighting some of our favorite hispanic filmmakers, music makers, writers, animators and more!
Each week, we’ll be adding a section to the blog to showcase a different industry.
Believe it or not, there are a lot of hispanic people making the movies and shows that you love. You can even stop by the library and check out some of the scripts and videos we have that were helmed by hispanic creatives!
Guillermo del Toro was born October 9, 1964 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Raised by his Catholic grandmother, del Toro developed an interest in filmmaking in his early teens. Later, he learned about makeup and effects from the legendary Dick Smith (The Exorcist) and worked on making his own short films. At the age of 21, del Toro executive produced his first feature, Dona Herlinda and Her Son. Del Toro spent almost 10 years as a makeup supervisor, and formed his own company, Necropia in the early 1980s. He also produced and directed Mexican television programs at this time, and taught film. – via IMDB
Alfonso Cuarón Orozco was born on November 28th in Mexico City, Mexico. From an early age, he yearned to be either a film director or an astronaut. However, he did not want to enter the army, so he settled for directing. – via IMDB
Alejandro González Iñárritu (ih-nyar-ee-too), born August 15th, 1963, is a Mexican film director. González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and by the Directors Guild of America for Best Director. He is also the first Mexican-born director to have won the Prix de la mise en scene or best director award at Cannes (2006), the second one being Carlos Reygadas in 2012. His six feature films, ‘Amores Perros’ (2000), ’21 Grams’ (2003), ‘Babel’ (2006), ‘Biutiful’ (2010), ‘Birdman’ (2014) and ‘The Revenant’ (2015), have gained critical acclaim world-wide including two Academy Award nominations. Alejandro González Iñárritu was born in Mexico City. – via IMDB
The most internationally acclaimed Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel was born in a small town (Calzada de Calatrava) in the impoverished Spanish region of La Mancha. He arrived in Madrid in 1968, and survived by selling used items in the flea-market called El Rastro. Almodóvar couldn’t study filmmaking because he didn’t have the money to afford it. Besides, the filmmaking schools were closed in early 70s by Franco’s government. Instead, he found a job in the Spanish phone company and saved his salary to buy a Super 8 camera. From 1972 to 1978, he devoted himself to make short films with the help of of his friends. The “premieres” of those early films were famous in the rapidly growing world of the Spanish counter-culture. In few years, Almodóvar became a star of “La Movida”, the pop cultural movement of late 70s Madrid. His first feature film, Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom, was made in 16 mm and blown-up to 35 mm for public release. In 1987, he and his brother Agustín Almodóvar established their own production company: El Deseo, S. A. The “Almodóvar phenomenon” has reached all over the world, making his films very popular in many countries. – via IMDB
The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior), and subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the university there, where his close friends included Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca. – via IMDB
Born in 1974, Sebastián Lelio is one of the leading figures (along with Pablo Larraín, Andrés Wood and a few others) of the post-dictatorship Chilean cinema. After graduating from the “Escuela de Cine de Chile” in Santiago, Lelio started by making shorts (he made five from 1995 to 2003, as well as a documentary). From 2005 on, he directed four remarkable feature films, the first three very dark, the fourth one somewhat lighter, which all garnered awards in the festival circuit. The Sacred Family is kind of Chilean version of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema. It was followed by Navidad, a drama of uncommon intensity focusing on three teenagers alienated from their families and The Year of the Tiger, recounting the escape of an inmate during Chile’s 2010 earthquake. Coming after this taught triptych, Gloria surprises by its peaceful tone. The amorous adventures of Gloria, a sixty-year-old office worker in Santiago, although not without tensions and bitterness, are less upsetting than what Lelio had filmed before. But whether dark or rosy, Lelio’s cinema explores the Chilean society of today with the same acuteness. – via IMDB
Guillermo Arriaga is a Mexican author, screenwriter, director and producer. Self-defined as “a hunter who works as a writer,” he is best known for his Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay nominations for Babel and his screenplay for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which received the 2005 Cannes Best Screenplay Award. – via Wikipedia
Javier “Javi” Grillo-Marxuach, born October 28, 1969 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is a television screenwriter and producer, and podcaster, known for his work as writer and producer on the first two seasons of the ABC television series Lost, as well as other series including Charmed and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. – via Wikipedia
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is an American playwright, screenwriter, and comic book writer best known for his work for Marvel Comics and for the television series Glee, Big Love, Riverdale, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin. He is Chief Creative Officer of Archie Comics. Aguirre-Sacasa grew up in Washington, D.C., the son of the senior Nicaraguan World Bank official turned Nicaraguan Ambassador to the US (1997-2000) and later Foreign Minister (2000-2002). Francisco Javier Aguirre Sacasa and Maria de los Angeles Sacasa Arguello y Gomez Arguello, both Nicaraguan nationals. Aguirre-Sacasa received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Georgetown University and later a Masters Degree in English literature from McGill University; he then graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 2003.
Pablo Larraín was born in Santiago, Chile. He is a director, writer and producer, known for Spencer (2021), Jackie (2016), El Club (2015), NO (2012), among others. Together with his brother Juan de Dios Larraín, they founded Fabula in 2004, one of the most prolific production companies in Latin America. – via IMDB
Juan Antonio García Bayona is a Spanish film director. He directed the 2007 horror film The Orphanage, the 2012 drama film The Impossible, and the 2016 fantasy drama film A Monster Calls. Bayona’s latest film is the 2018 science fiction adventure film Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the fifth installment of the Jurassic Park film series. He has also directed television commercials and music videos. He will direct the first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. – via IMDB
Damián Szifron is an Argentine film and television director and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the TV series Los Simuladores, the most successful TV series in the history of Argentina, and writer-director of Wild Tales, the most successful film in the history of Argentina. – via Wikipedia
Juan José Campanella is an Argentine television and film director, writer and producer. He achieved worldwide attention with the release of The Secret in Their Eyes, for which he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. – via Wikipedia
Is the son of a Spanish mother and a Chilean father. His family moved back to Spain when he was 1 year old, and he grew up and studied in Madrid. He wrote, produced and directed his first short film La cabeza at the age of 19, and he was 23 when he directed his feature debut Thesis. His film Open Your Eyes was a huge success in Spain and was distributed worldwide. It was remade in Hollywood by Cameron Crowe as Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz (also the star of the original version) and Cameron Diaz. The Others is Amenábar’s first English language film. – via IMDB
Charise Castro Smith is an American playwright, actress, screenwriter, producer, and co-director. Castro Smith is from Miami, Florida, where she was raised in a Cuban American family. She attended Brown University as an undergraduate student and later the Yale School of Drama, where she earned her MFA in acting. Previous to graduate school, she was a city schoolteacher. She lives in LA and is married to actor Joby Earle, whom she met at Yale. – via Wikipedia
Hailing from The Bronx, Steven Canals is a 2015 graduate of UCLA’s MFA Screenwriting program. He began his writing career as a Research Assistant at Hungry Jackal Productions for Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. Steven served as the Staff Writer on Freeform’s Dead of Summer, the same year his short film, Afuera, premiered at the 2016 LA Film Festival. He is Co-Creator and Co-Executive Producer of Pose (2018). Canals is openly queer. He is of African American and Puerto Rican heritage. – via IMDB and Wikipedia
Rodrigo Prieto is a Mexican cinematographer. He is best known for Brokeback Mountain (2005), Babel (2006), Argo (2012), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and Silence (2016). He also worked with Alejandro González Iñárritu on the acclaimed Amores perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003), and Biutiful (2010). Pietro was nominated for two Academy Award for Best Cinematography, first in Brokeback Mountain and later in Silence. – via IMDB
Luisa Leschin (born Louisa Josefina Gomez) is an American television producer, actress, and voice-over artist. She currently serves as co-executive producer for the Amazon Studios TV series Just Add Magic. In 2019, she won a Norman Lear Writer’s Award at the 34th annual Imagen Awards. Leschin was born in Hollywood and grew up in Guatemala, where Spanish was her native tongue. Leschin’s mother was a concert pianist and her father was a former President of El Salvador. At age five, she made her debut as a dancer, and at the age of eight, she left Guatemala to spend her teenage years in Europe, where she learned to speak French and Italian. After her return to America, she studied at the High School of Performing Arts in New York City, where she majored in ballet. – via Wikipedia
What’s a celebration without any music? Check out the playlist we made. It’s full of our favorite Hispanic artists from around the world!
Everyone loves cartoons! And I’ll bet you didn’t know that some of your childhood favorites had Hispanic and Latino artists working on the creative team behind them. Below, we’ve highlighted some fantastic Hispanic and Latino artists next to the animated features they’re attached to.
@lafslibrary LAFS Students, come check out the new arrivals to our book collection! #librarytok #thelosangelesfilmschool #newbooks #booktok #nationalbookloversday ♬ Opportunity - Quvenzhané Wallis
Labor Day Weekend is the perfect opportunity to get in some last minute Summer excitement! If you’re in need of some suggestions, we’ve got you covered. Here are a few events we found online. Let us know what your Labor Day Weekend plans are!
The first day of Fall is fast approaching! That time of year for gloomy skies, falling leaves and your favorite sweater. The kids go back to school, and the summer heat finally begins to let up. It’s our signal that the end of the year is soon to come and a reminder of how precious time truly is.
To many people in the United States, Autumn is an opportunity to acknowledge everything we have to be grateful for. It’s the season of harvest and abundance – the season of reflection and new beginnings.
This year, the first day of Fall is September 22nd. So mark your calendars and cozy up with your loved ones. We’ve taken the liberty of creating a September Songs playlist, and a September Watchlist to make getting into the Autumn spirit as easy as pumpkin pie.
Grab yourself a pumpkin spice latte, a warm blanket and relax with our September Songs Playlist.
