LATINO FILMS : 2 Movies Will Spotlight Latino Images : One Is on Migrant Life, the Other on a Mariachi

Two independently made feature films will bring diverse images of Latino life to the big screen next year. One is an adaptation of a seminal Chicano novel while the other was written and produced by a young Mexican-American filmmaker on a minuscule $7,000 budget.

The films are Severo Perez’s “Tierra� and Robert Rodriguez’s “El Mariachi.�

“Tierra� is based on the late Chicano writer-educator Tomas Rivera’s prize-winning novel of migrant life in Texas, “ . . . y no se lo trago la tierra / . . . and the earth did not part.�

“I’ve worked four years on the ‘Tierra’ project,� Perez said. “Actually, I first got hooked on the book in 1973, but someone else had the film rights then. Still, I kept hoping.�

During that waiting period, Perez built a profitable educational film business in Los Angeles and worked on other film projects. His first effort, “Soldier Boy,� a collaboration with his wife, Judith, was a reflection on the aftermath of World War II on a Latino family. It never made it to the big screen, but Perez rewrote it as a play. Luis Valdez produced and directed it at his Teatro Campesino in 1982.

When Perez finally obtained the film rights to “Tierra,� he got KPBS producer Paul Espinosa involved in the project. Perez and Espinosa initially received one of the largest grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities to research and write the screenplay and to produce the film. Since then, the project has received additional funding from American Playhouse and the Corp. for Public Broadcasting. (Perez estimates that the film’s budget is under $2 million).

Anyone familiar with Rivera’s book might cringe at the prospect of trying to piece together a film from its short episodes and interior dialogue. Yet Perez’s script has skillfully made a seamless story of a Chicano boy growing up in a migrant farm worker family in the 1950s.

While the industry has bemoaned the alleged lack of qualified Latino actors for starring roles, Perez said he encountered no such problems. “There’s an enormous talent pool out there. I saw about 300 kids for the lead role of the boy,� Perez said. “It was important to me to cast the film with such credibility that no one for a moment would deny that this was a real migrant family.�

Playing the lead role of Marcos in the film is Jose Alcala, an East L.A. teen-ager who attends Belvedere Junior High School and who previously worked on a TV movie-of-the-week. Also in the film are Rose Portillo, and Marco Rodriguez as the boy’s parents. Others in major roles include Daniel Valdez, Lupe Ontiveros and Sal Lopez.

Although the film will ultimately be shown on PBS’ American Playhouse, Perez said it is in PBS’ interest to have the film shown in movie houses first, as were “Stand and Deliver� and “El Norte.� Those two films were both made for American Playhouse and are among PBS’ highest-rated programs. “We anticipate our film will follow in that tradition,� Perez said. Nevertheless, Perez feels that his film will be different in many ways because it will not be told in chronological or docudrama fashion.

“A lot is impressionistic, a reflection on how this child remembers his life. The fragments and pieces become sort of a larger story. I hope it will challenge audiences. Latinos are going to be drawn to the story. It’s a film filled with hope; otherwise, these people couldn’t survive,� Perez added.

Perez has worked in the film industry since he graduated about 25 years ago from the University of Texas at Austin. Coincidentally, he and fellow filmmaker Rodriguez are from San Antonio, Texas. But Rodriguez, 24, is still a student at the same university and barely starting his film career.

Rodriguez has proven to be a Hollywood success story. His homemade film, “El Mariachi,� a story of a mariachi musician mistaken for a pistolero, proved to be the hit at this year’s prestigious Telluride Film Festival in Colorado.

“I see much talent and promise in Rodriguez’s work,� Cuban writer and critic Guillermo Cabrera Infante, who served as Telluride’s guest director, told Nuestro Tiempo. “The audience demanded five showings of ‘El Mariachi.’ There is a hunger for Latino films now just as there was for Latin American literature.�

The film is also scheduled for showings in January at Robert Redford’s Sundance Festival, before its national release by Columbia Pictures in the spring.

Working with the $7,000 budget, Rodriguez’s film was shot in the Texas border towns of Del Rio and Ciudad Acuna using a single 16-millimeter silent camera. The Spanish-language soundtrack was added later with a tape recorder. He had originally made the film to sell to a Spanish-language home video distributor. Rodriguez flatly admits that he never expected his film to make it in the United States.

“I figured I’d double what I spent to make the film, and that way use the money to make more films,� he said. “I had even written two more scripts in which my mariachi musician becomes an action hero. In fact, we had saved some of the best action sequences for the sequel.�

Last December, he and his longtime friend, Carlos Gallardo, who stars in the lead role as “El Mariachi,� came to Los Angeles with the finished product transferred to a video master. A Spanish-language home video distributor offered him $17,000 for the American and Mexican video rights. But Rodriguez balked at signing away the rights to his film when the money for the Mexican video rights was delayed. Faced with the prospect of returning home empty-handed, Rodriguez took a demo reel of his work to the powerful film industry agency, International Creative Management, which counts Arnold Schwarzenegger and Julia Roberts among its clients.

“It had a minute or so trailer of pure visual stuff from ‘El Mariachi’--a guy in black, a guitar case, and weapons. I also included my short student film ‘Bedhead’, “ which had won several awards and helped him gain admission to the University of Texas film school.

“I told the people at ICM that I just want them to tell me if they saw any raw talent in my work and that I would have more to show them in a year. Well, they called me back and asked to see the entire film. I went back to Austin and used a computer generator to do subtitles for the film.�

ICM agreed to represent Rodriguez and sent out 100 video copies of his film to different studios. He signed with Columbia Pictures because of the creative freedom they had given John Singleton, another first-time filmmaker, who earned an Oscar nomination as best director with his “Boyz N the Hood.�

Because of “El Mariachi,� Rodriguez said, “I’ve been offered all these Western scripts, but I want to do family comedy that’s fast-paced. I used to do a comic strip called “Los Hooligans� for the university newspaper, the Daily Texan. I love to draw, and it shows in my films.�

Rodriguez is also adamant about reflecting his Latino heritage. “Anywhere I can, I’d like to include a positive Latino character, at least one in every film I do. I have a strong Latina in ‘El Mariachi,’ something you rarely find in the action hero genre. In my short film ‘Bedhead,’ my 9-year-old sister starred as the heroine of the tale. In it she remarks, ‘I want to be the first female Mexican-American president of the United States.’ How many films in Hollywood even acknowledge our existence, much less our aspirations?�

Some other developments in the Latino film scene this year include:

* The emergence of a new generation of Mexican filmmakers with movies that are earning both critical raves and breathing life into the box offices of Spanish-language theaters in the area. Mexican filmmaker Maria Novaro’s feature film, “Danzon,� not only opened at several art theaters on the Westside (in Spanish with English subtitles) but was picked up by the region’s Spanish-language theater chains and enjoyed a successful run at several theaters in the greater Los Angeles area.

* Mexican film director (“Mojado Power�) and actor Alfonso Arau’s film, “Like Water for Chocolate,� based on Mexican writer Lucy Esquivel’s recent best-selling novel, will take a lesson from “Danzon.� It will be shown in both local art houses and downtown Spanish-language chains when it is released in February.

* Jesse Borrego, a Chicano actor from San Antonio, has starring roles in two forthcoming films, “Blood In-Blood Out� and “La Vida Loca.� In a change of pace, he also will star in Jo Ann Akalaitis’ production of “Wozak� at the Public Theatre of New York.

* Manny Coto, a 27-year-old Cuban-American filmmaker, savored success this year when he helped write and directed “Dr. Giggles� for Universal Pictures. It made the Top 10 box-office charts for several weeks.

* Independent Latino film projects currently in production include “Chicano! History of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement,� a four-part series for public television produced by Luis Torres.

* Judy Hecht Dumontet will follow her highly praised short documentary, “Homeboys� with a feature film, “Color Blind,� which will explore gang-related issues through the eyes of a middle-class Latina mother in Stockton.

* Nancy De Los Santos is currently in production with “Breaking Pan with Sol,� a contemporary story of a Latina’s late coming of age. De Los Santos was one of the winners of this year’s prestigious Universal Hispanic film project competition.

* UCLA student filmmaker Carlos Avila won more than $300,000 in the Fuji College Film Competition. He has just completed “La carpa,� an hour-long piece scheduled for American Playhouse next season.

* Chicanos ‘90, a group of Chicano and Mexican filmmakers, who recognize kinship in their mutual goals in filmmaking, are planning their second encuentro (meeting) for Mexico City early next year.