Los Lonely Boys Movie has Rhythm, Blues
Rick Smith
San Angelo Standard Times
June 11th, 2006

For fans of Los Lonely Boys, ”Cottonfields and Crossroads” is an 89-minute slice of movie heaven.

Not a fan? You might be after watching this documentary about the bluesy rock ‘n’ roll band from San Angelo.

The movie opened Friday in San Angelo, Corpus Christi and five cities in the Rio Grande Valley.

San Angelo native Hector Galan directed and co-produced the film. He gives us some interesting insights into San Angelo’s talented Garza brothers - Henry, Jojo and Ringo - and their family.

To help us understand how the brothers got to where they are, he shows us where they’re from.

Part of the fun of the movie is seeing people and places we know. The movie includes a short history of San Angelo, with pictures of the city and commentary from natives such as musicians Robert Fernandez and Tony ”Ham” Guerrero.

Early-day San Angelo was not an easy place for Hispanics. Discrimination, poor housing and limited employment were among problems the movie lists.

Enrique ”Ringo” Garza Sr., the brothers’ father, talks about picking cotton ”from sunup to sundown” when he was growing up.

He recalls pulling a 100-pound bag of cotton through mosquito-infested fields when it was ”hotter than hot.”

The biggest laugh from the small, mostly Hispanic crowd in Friday’s first showing came from the movie’s explanation of how San Angelo’s alphabetized street system worked in the barrio. As the street’s letters got farther along in the alphabet, the neighborhood got poorer.

By Avenue Z, ”You were very poor.”

Music provided a way for the family to overcome poverty and discrimination.

The movie includes personal, sometimes painful, interviews with the brothers’ father and their mother, Mary Ellen Villanueva.

The couple divorced when the boys were young, the father taking the three sons and the mother taking the two daughters.

”It was very hard” for the children, the mother said.

And for her, too. She said she suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of the divorce.

The movie is more upbeat than down, though.

I enjoyed the father’s story of how he, married but childless at age 25, prayed for children.

”I want to know what it’s like to be a dad,” he said in his prayer.

Then, promptly, his prayers were answered with five children in five years.

”That’s it,” he said after the fifth child.

”I got myself a band. Now what am I going to do?”

After the divorce, he took his musically talented young sons to Nashville. He and the boys tried to break into the country music business with a four-piece band.

The boys learned to play instruments at young ages. Henry began playing guitar at age 3 and wrote his first song at 4 1/2 .

About the music, Henry said, ”I knew it was in me.”

They discovered Nashville wasn’t ready for a Hispanic band singing country-western songs such as ”Folsom Prison Blues.”

”There were times when people started laughing,” Ringo Sr. said.

Eventually, his sons returned to their first love - rock ‘n’ roll - and they all came back to San Angelo.

”They were too fast and too good for country,” the father said of his sons. ”They wanted to go where Dad didn’t go.”

The movie touches on the apparently painful split as the brothers began performing as a trio without their father.

”I wanted to be onstage. That was my dream,” Ringo Sr. said.

”To this day, it still hurts. I’m learning to live with it.”

The personal interviews give the movie drama, but the concert scenes make it stand up and dance. Henry’s incredible guitar picking, seen close up, is worth the price of the show.

We get to hear some amazing music.

Toward the end of the movie, Henry wonders how he and his brothers will know if and when they’ve become true stars.

Maybe it’s all a matter of money, he ponders.

I’d add that winning a Grammy helps, too.

So does having a talented filmmaker tell the story, so far.
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Cottonfields and Crossroads–Los Lonely Boys Documentary Opens Soon at Valley Theaters
Kate Lohnes
McAllen Monitor
June 2, 2006

For Texas crooners Los Lonely Boys, it seems like heaven doesn’t get much closer.

After an explosive three years on the national music scene, where their album has gone multi-platinum and they’ve earned a Grammy for their respective mantels, Los Lonely Boys can add “movie stars” to their resumes. Los Lonely Boys: Cottonfields and Crossroads, opens June 9 at Cinemark theaters across the Rio Grande Valley.

The documentary, which officially premiered March 17 at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, follows the group’s rise out of San Angelo and into the national limelight. According to director Hector Galán, he originally intended the film as a PBS special feature or direct-to-DVD project, but decided to pursue a commercial release after positive responses.

“We had no problems getting offers on DVD, but we didn’t want to do it right away,” he said. “We knew we could touch and reach the community through other means. Normally, you don’t do that, but the power of this one would compete with a Hollywood blockbuster.”

Galán said the movie will start in Cinemark theaters in Brownsville, Harlingen, McAllen, Weslaco, Mission, Corpus Christi and in San Angelo.

“We’ll put it out there on a limited run and see how we do,” he said. “We’re starting in seven Texas cities and hopefully keep moving throughout the country.”

The film not only recognizes Los Lonely Boys and their self-described “Texican” roots, but showcases film professionals with Valley ties as well. While Galán is from San Angelo, he and wife Evy, a Harlingen native, co-founded the Cinesol Film Festival in 1993 and have been involved with the festival ever since. Every year, Cinesol showcases Latin American and cultural American films for two weeks, traveling to theaters from Brownsville to McAllen.

Brownsville native Gustavo Aguilar also worked on the film as the principle photographer. Aguilar, who now lives in Austin and works as a freelance photographer, said he shot most of the film’s footage, from sit-down interviews with the group and their families to live performances. Having a project he helped create screen in mainstream theaters is an honor, Aguilar said.

“I jokingly made plans to go see the movie the entire weekend,” he said. “I grew up watching Cinemark theaters in the Valley, so to get the project included in the weekend line-ups is just great.”

Galán said the Valley is the perfect place to give the film its commercial debut because the story is so relatable.

“There’s a lot of connection (with the Valley),” he said. “A lot of the history of San Angelo has the same history as the Valley.”

The Valley’s strong musical and historical background will gel well with the story of Los Lonely Boys, Aguilar said.

“I think (audiences) will be able to see people they know in the movie,” he said. “It’s about the three brothers working hard and chasing down a dream that actually happened. I think the Valley embraces rock ‘n’ roll from Santana to El Chicano, and Los Lonely Boys are kind of in the same vein of music. Some people in the Valley are fans, and the fans will thoroughly enjoy this movie.”
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FILMMAKER HECTOR GALAN AND HIS SUBJECTS, LOS LONELY BOYS, SHARE HOMETOWN

Hector Saldaña
San Antonio Express-News
March 19, 2006

The connection is a dusty West Texas city.

Filmmaker Hector Galán feels connected to the Grammy-winning Los Lonely Boys, not only because he is the first to document their unlikely rise to fame, but because they share the same hometown — San Angelo.

“That’s the connection, man,” Galán said from his Austin production studio about his bond to the brothers Garza — guitarist Henry, bassist Jojo and drummer Ringo.

But that feeling runs deeper still. He calls it familia. Like Los Lonely Boys, Galán grew up poor in the barrio.

“You’ve got to understand, these guys were on the edge. I mean they were very, very poor. You’ve got the barrio, and there’s the barrio,” he said.

Galán’s feature-length documentary “Los Lonely Boys Cottonfields and Crossroads,” which debuted at South by Southwest on Friday, offers big-picture context on the small-town story. It connects the brothers to a lineage of regional acts such as La Tortilla Factory, El Charro Negro and Los Tejanos, and to the segregation of post-World War II San Angelo.

It was a time when Mexican Americans picked cotton and stayed in their place — in shanty neighborhoods such as La Loma.

“That’s what I was looking for — the arc,” Galán said. “What they represent is deeper, it’s more sociological.”

The 52-year-old filmmaker said that for Latinos, his movie — set for theatrical release later this year — “makes you feel proud to be Chicano.” Indeed, Los Lonely Boys (on camera and in real life) never stray from what Galán calls “their chuco, Stacy Adams roots.”

Los Lonely Boys grew up playing thankless weekend gigs in bars and cantinas as backup musicians for their father, Enrique Garza, a rogue-ish conjunto musician with dreams of becoming a country star.

Chasing that dream would break up his family and lead to a self-serving scheme of moving with his under-age sons to Nashville in 1991. But it is soon obvious that Enrique’s country and outlaw conjunto talents take a back seat to Los Lonely Boys’ brand of Texican rock ‘n’ roll, which is indebted as much to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers as to Santana, Little Joe and Joe Bravo.

On camera, Enrique unapologetically dissects the vicarious nature of the relationship with his sons. It is insightful and, at times, wince-inducing.

Galán himself is a self-described failed musician. He was a long-haired singer in the late ’60s with a San Angelo garage band called Plastic Finger.

“Maybe because of my own history, my own ambitions in music, that I saw something in these boys that reminded them of me,” he said. “I identified with not only the music, but with their lives and who they are. And the way they’ve kept their heads about themselves now that they’re as big as they are. The whole concept of familia, there’s something real special about that.”

Galán’s first job after high school was with the CBS-TV affiliate in San Angelo. “I cut my hair and started running camera,” said Galán, today known for award-winning PBS documentaries such as “Accordion Dreams.”

Later, he would become the first in his family to go to college.

“College was beyond us. We were Chicanos. You didn’t think about college. Just make it through high school,” he said.

In those days, Galán was actively involved in La Raza Unida and the Chicano Movement. He recalls the early ’70s fondly, but said that progress has been slow. Galán insists there is still an old guard in San Angelo, and that the city is split down the middle on Los Lonely Boys.

“They don’t like these (Chicano) rockers talking about San Angelo,” he said. “Then you have the other part of the population that they’re their heroes. It’s so magic because it shows them before they made it.”

Los Lonely Boys — who Galán followed on their first treks to rinky-dink Austin gigs at Saxon Pub in a road-battered van — even thanked him on their 2004 debut album’s liner notes.

The early live music footage is a joy, but it’s the quieter, unguarded moments that are priceless: Henry ruminating on creating “my own tortilla” with his guitar solos, for one.

“This is one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve ever had in producing a feature length documentary,” Galán said. “I knew it would touch a cord in people.”

Galán spent four years filming, and he financed the high-end “labor of love” project himself. He did not go for the hero-profile-type of approach. It is not a puff piece.

“The easy road would’ve been to let’s just talk about how great these guys are,” he said. “But I thought I was going to be the one to introduce them to a national audience. I had no idea that these guys were going to take off like a rocket. That’s why I was doing it. I wanted to introduce America to who these boys are and what West Texas is: Los Lonely Boys is the music of West Texas.”

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From The Stage To Screen
Los Lonely Boys Subjects of a Hector Galán Documentary

By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, March 18, 2006

At South by Southwest two years ago, a trio of brothers from San Angelo were the titans of the town — their jampacked show at Auditorium Shores backed up traffic for miles in all directions.

With a debut album soaring up the charts, eventually selling more than 2 million copies and spawning the Grammy-winning hit “Heaven,” Los Lonely Boys were well on their way to achieving the goal of becoming “the Mexican Beatles.”

Guitarist Henry Garza dazzled fans at a private show Friday at Mexic-Arte Museum. He and brothers JoJo and Ringo celebrated the release of the documentary ‘Los Lonely Boys: Cottonfields and Crossroads.’

Filmmaker Hector Galán, second from left, said he ‘could identify with these young guys who loved the blues’ – from left, Henry, JoJo and Ringo Garza.

Henry, JoJo and Ringo Garza were back at the festival Friday in a much more low-key setting, playing songs from their upcoming, as yet untitled album at a Mexic-Arte Museum private party to celebrate the world premiere of “Los Lonely Boys: Cottonfields and Crossroads,” a documentary from filmmaker Hector Galán, also from San Angelo.

“I think the film really captures the family aspect of what we do,” guitarist Henry Garza said. “We cried a few tears. It brought back a lot about the tough times, when we just struggled to survive.”

Although the band’s improbable rise from humble beginnings is the film’s main story line, “Cottonfields” is also a compelling exploration of Mexican American culture, of wearing Stacy Adams shoes to high school when all the other kids are wearing Nikes.

A pivotal point in the film — and in Los Lonely Boys’ career — came when the teenage Garza trio fired their father, country-music-loving Ringo Sr., as lead singer and forged out on their own as a blues band.

“I hugged my dad when we watched the film,” drummer Ringo Jr. said. “I think the main message of the movie is that family is everything.”

Galán said he was inspired to document Los Lonely Boys in 2002, before the music industry had any idea who these bluesmen with brotherly harmonies were.

“I saw them at the Saxon Pub, and they did a song called ‘Cottonfields and Crossroads,’ about growing up in San Angelo, and the memories just came flooding back,” Galán said. “I was a Latino kid who loved listening to Led Zeppelin and Steppenwolf, so I could identify with these young guys who loved the blues.”

The chronology of the film stops before the January 2005 arrest of Ringo Garza, who was charged with marijuana possession when officers came to his house to investigate claims of sexual assault.

The drug charge was subsequently dropped when his wife said the drugs were hers. No charges were ever brought on the sexual assault claim.

“If charges had been made, it would’ve been in the film,” Galán said. “I did my own investigation and found that the charges were baseless.”

The 52-year-old Galán, who has filmed 11 episodes of PBS’ “Frontline,” said he hopes to sell the film to a national distributor. Interest is building in a DVD from the hours of interviews he conducted with the zany Garza brothers.

“In a way, it feels like we’re starting over,” Henry Garza said, when asked to compare this SXSW appearance to the band’s 2004 show. “But that’s cool. We always play better when we’re a little hungrier.”

Indeed, this band seemed on a mission when it unveiled its next single, “Diamonds,” which electrified the packed house at Mexic-Arte.

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Los Lonely Boys
Don Henry Ford Jr.
The Agonist
March 18, 2006

Hector Galan invited me to attend the screening of Los Lonely Boys, Cottonfields and Crossroads yesterday in Austin at the SXSW music and film festival. I had a vested interest in going; Hector recently acquired an option to the documentary film rights of my book.

Life gets in the way. The phone rings. Someone needs hay. I decide to move a grain drill from Seguin to Belmont—the damn thing is sixteen feet wide and between road construction and too much traffic, the trip leaves me frazzled. I look at my watch and realize I barely have time to make it if I leave without changing clothes or cleaning up.

Austin traffic on a Friday. Not just any Friday. SXSW. Gridlock. Find a parking space? Good luck. Takes more than luck. Seven bucks and knowing where to go. I don’t know.

I arrive thirty minutes later than planned, dirty, ready to cut the next son-of-a-buck that gets in my way. The place is full of people. Two cowboy hats. One on my head, the other on the head of Enrique Garza Sr., the father of Los Lonely Boys. So maybe I’m not totally alone in this insane city. Then I see Hector. He gets me past the protectors of the gate.

I take my seat. The movie comes on. For the next two hours I am lost in the world of Los Lonely Boys. Before it’s over I am washed clean.

Afterwards, I go to a party and get to meet the patriarch of the Garza family.

I had listened to the boy’s music and thought it OK, but never quite understood why they were so popular. Now I know. Watch this movie and you will too. Catch them live and you’ll know. These guys are on fire. Their live performance incorporates power, skill, heart, soul, timing and spirit, uniquely their own.

Henry Garza compares playing his music to making a tortilla. He takes a little Hendrix, a little Clapton, some Ritchie Valens, Stevie Ray Vaughn, some of the roots music his dad taught him, throws in his own secret ingredients and viola, Texican Rock and Roll emerges.

But what sets this group far and above the rest is family. There’s a bond among these boys: love, respect, pride in their culture and their heritage, and a general sense that you’re in the presence of good honest American folk. That’s right. American. Best of the best we have to offer. These guys have roots.

One of the mistakes people make when describing America is that Mexicans get left out of the equation. America wouldn’t be America without the contribution Latinos have made and continue to make to this land. The world of Americana music is not unlike the rest of the country, dominated by white males. It’s time to break down the barriers and let the raza in. There’s no way you can call your product roots music without recognizing all the various branches that make up this land and its history.

(Note: On a recent trip to El Paso/Juarez I visited an old cathedral. Date of construction, and this is one big honkin’ building: 1600’s. About the same time some white guy was landing at Jamestown and settling (?) North America.)

Enrique Garza Sr. fought like hell to be included in the world of country music, and while he was allowed to play in honkytonks, the large arena remained beyond his reach. Not too many rednecks were willing to consider some Mexican singing country songs. When his boys asked him how to handle this rejection he told them to take it easy and that when you play your music, they’ll understand. The boys listened and are still doing that to this day. Enrique Sr. didn’t fulfill his personal dream of being a name brand performer, but his sons are accomplishing the feat on his behalf. The studio CD has sold over two million copies. If I don’t miss my guess, they’re just getting warmed up.

Their live performances are light-years better than the CD. Hector Galan was around to capture some of that along with the family history that makes this group what it is.

Watch the movie when it comes your way. Parts will make you angry. Parts will make you laugh; other parts may make you cry. Before it’s over you’ll clap and cheer and emerge feeling cleansed of divisive hatred and racism that threatens to tear this country apart.

I for one left feeling better about the land I know and love and proud to call Los Lonely Boys, mis hermanos.

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Home Made: ‘Cottonfields and Crossroads’
Austin Chronicle
BY BELINDA ACOSTA
March 17, 2006

Home Made: ‘Cottonfields and Crossroads’

When documentary filmmaker Hector Galán decided to tell the Los Lonely Boys’ story, he thought his film would be the first to introduce them to a national audience.

“There were 40 people in the audience when I saw them at [Austin's] Saxon Pub,” Galán says. “Then they took off!”

In 2002, when filming on Los Lonely Boys: Cottonfields and Crossroads began, the Boys’ multiplatinum-selling first album, Austin Music Awards adulation (2004), and their Grammy win (2005) were a mere twinkle in their future – a bright, hard-to-miss twinkle by prognosticator’s standards – and, in the minds of the Texican blues-rockers from San Angelo, what was yet to come was still a dream.

“I filmed them at a very innocent time” Galán says. “So, in the film, when they’re wondering, ‘Are we stars or what?’ that’s genuine.”

Cottonfields and Crossroads marks another entry in what could be called Galán’s Tejano music cycle, joining critically acclaimed documentaries like Songs of the Homeland, Accordion Dreams, and others. While those earlier films sought to reveal and celebrate Tex-Mex music, this film marks a crucial juncture: Los Lonely Boys are the first Texican band to cross over with broad and sustained appeal.

“They learned conjunto and country music at their daddy’s knee,” Galán says. “But they were also listening to the radio like all kids who wanted to make music.”

“I make my own tortilla,” says Henry Garza, the eldest of the three brothers, whose blazing guitarwork has many placing him in the pantheon of Texas guitar legends like Stevie Ray Vaughan, in the film. “I take the ingredients, which I take from all the greats, all the teachers, from the Jimi Hendrix to the Richie Valens to Carlos Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan, B.B. King, Buddy Guy … I take all that … put my own little flavor, roll it up, and say, ‘Here. Taste it.’” In delivering this documentary, Galán does that and more.

4pm, Austin Convention Center
Copyright © 2006 Austin Chronicle Corporation. All rights reserved.

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FAMILIA AND FAME

Los Lonely Boys film not just about music

By Bryan Russell
San Angelo Standard Times
March 17, 2006

Hector Galan has had an impressive career behind the camera, but a part of him still dreams of standing behind a microphone.

”I’m sort of what you’d call a failed musician,” he said.

Galan played in a San Angelo band called Plastic Finger, but now the Austin-based director is busy chronicling the rise and impact of Tejano and conjunto music in movies such as ”Songs of the Homeland” and ”Accordion Dreams.”

Galan’s latest project, ”Cottonfields and Crossroads,” documents the struggles, dedication and mercurial rise to fame of San Angelo band Los Lonely Boys, detailing brothers Henry, Jojo and Ringo Garza’s lives from their childhood spent playing music in a string of cantinas and Southern honkytonks to their win at the 2005 Grammy Awards.

The movie will premiere today at the capital city’s South by Southwest music and film festival.

Galan started his career in television after he graduated from Central High School in 1972 as a cameraman for San Angelo’s CBS affiliate. He graduated from Texas Tech University and got involved in the Chicano movement, which inspired him to use film to capture the lives and culture of Mexican-Americans.

”I thought television could be used for a stronger purpose - telling stories about people,” Galan said.

Galan, who created the PBS series ”Chicano!: The History of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement,” first caught wind of Los Lonely Boys in 2001 when a Houston reporter asked if he had heard of the band.

His wife saw a flyer advertising a Los Lonely Boys appearance at Austin’s Saxon Club, and Galan checked out the show. That event sparked the inspiration for ”Cottonfields and Crossroads.”

”I was struck at how good they were,” he said. ”I had an interest (to do the film) and decided to do it for real.”

More so than the Boys’ signature ”Texican” blend of blues, rock, pop, country and Mexican music, Galan said watching the band that night took him back to his youth in San Angelo, when he attended neighborhood dances at St. Mary Catholic Church, and to the days when he tinkered with music.

”Those young kids reminded me of that innocent period of experimenting with music,” he said. ”They incorporate a lot of rock music (plus other music) they learned from their father. It intrigued me. Those guys turned my head.”

While Galan was fleshing out the film, he decided he didn’t want it to become a promotional piece. Instead, he wanted ”Cottonfields and Crossroads” to reflect West Texas’ Mexican-American musical heritage and legacy.

”I wanted to dig deep into the landscape,” Galan said. ”San Angelo was a tough place for Mexican-American people, and I wanted (viewers) to understand that context of the music.”

Galan said he also sought to capture the Boys’ pachuco style - a flashy way of dressing, such as in zoot suits, among Mexican-American youths - and their dedication to the concept of ”familia.”

”It’s a concept of identity. The way they dress is a throwback to the pachuco era,” he said. ”They keep the whole style and perpetuate it.

”They also show that regardless of the generation, the whole concept of ‘familia’ is still intact,” Galan added. ”You can be marginalized by society, but ‘familia’ is still intact. … That fascinated me.”

Galan is presently working on a film about retired San Antonio Archbishop Patrick Flores and the impact he had on Texas Catholics. In the meantime, he is making arrangements to release ”Cottonfields and Crossroads” in theaters.

”It’s a movie that will make you laugh and make you cry,” Galan said. ”It carries the audience on a journey that’s very fulfilling.”

Coming Saturday: Coverage of the premiere of the Los Lonely Boys documentary, ”Cottonfields and Crossroads.”
Copyright 2006, San Angelo Standard-Times. All Rights Reserved.
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FOR THE LOVE OF LOS LONELY BOYS
Dozens flock to see new film on local band

By Bryan Russell,
San Angelo Standard Times
March 18, 2006

AUSTIN - A group of women in black T-shirts that read ”Los Lonely Boys” in shimmering silver cursive gathered eagerly Friday in front of one of the screening rooms at the Austin Convention Center.

The women came from as far away as Dallas to catch the premiere of ”Cottonfields and Crossroads,” a documentary about the San Angelo band’s struggles - and rise to fame - by filmmaker Hector Galan, a San Angelo native.

The movie premiered at Austin’s annual South by Southwest music and film festival. Galan is making arrangements to release ”Cottonfields and Crossroads” in theaters.

Most of the women seemed older than 30, but they smiled like giddy girls at the mention of Henry, Jojo and Ringo Garza.

”We just love them,” Ora Davenport of Seguin said. ”We love their music, and they believe in family and God. They’re just awesome.”

Veronica Evans of Austin started following the Boys in 2003. She said their humility and respect for their roots hooked her.

”The fame and fortune hasn’t changed them. That’s what makes them different,” she said. ”That’s why we love them.”

The crowd of about 200 chanted ”LLB” as the Garza brothers were ushered in to the theater. Before the lights dimmed, guitarist Henry Garza leaned forward to chat with a fan two rows below him, gesticulating as the clamor in the theater grew.

The crowd applauded as Galan walked in the theater.

”I’m glad everyone was able to find parking,” he joked. ”It’s crazy, but like Ringo would say, ‘You ready for some Texican rock and roll?’ Enjoy the show.”

The film opened with the sound of crickets chirping and a scene of a West Texas prairie silhouetted against a crimson sunset. A bluesy voice sang, ”We’re just lonely, lonely boys, runnin’ away from home. … Nobody cares. Nobody cares. We’re all alone.”

The movie detailed the days when the fledgling band played at Austin’s Saxon Pub. In the film, pub owner Joe Abels described the Boys’ passion for music.

”These kids wanted to play,” he said. ”You could see it in their faces. They exuded an energy.

”Cottonfields and Crossroads” also documented the early Hispanic music scene in San Angelo, and the racism Chicanos encountered in a city where Chicano World War II veterans, in uniform, wouldn’t be served coffee.

The Boys’ father, Ringo Garza Sr., said music transcended discrimination.

”Once we started playing, they forgot (about our race),” he said in the movie about his band, the Falcones.

The film showed the Boys and their father singing in their backyard. Henry Garza described how isolated San Angelo is, and why they had to travel to hit it big.

San Angelo ”is like a desert. It’s isolated,” he said. ”It’s not like Austin or San Antonio. Even Abilene has an Olive Garden, and we don’t.”

The audience laughed.

Olive Garden plans to build a restaurant in front of San Angelo’s Home Depot, on Loop 306, in the coming months.

Bassist Jojo Garza spoke about their lives on the road, a time when each gig determined whether they would make rent that month.

”We were surviving,” he said. ”We didn’t live well. We were surviving.”

The movie captured the Boys’ trials and triumphs, including their parents’ divorce and their Grammy win in 2005. As the screen faded to black, the audience stood and applauded.

Henry Garza said he enjoyed the film.

”Sitting back there and watching it, man, it hit the pump every time,” he said.

Jojo Garza said he was grateful to Galan for immortalizing their early days in film.

”I thank Hector for taking an interest in us,” he said. ”It really was very touching.”

Galan started his career in television after he graduated from Central High School in 1972 as a cameraman for San Angelo’s CBS affiliate. He graduated from Texas Tech University and got involved in the Chicano movement, which inspired him to use film to capture the lives and culture of Mexican-Americans.

Davenport waited outside the doors, fumbling with a disposable camera before the Boys exited.

The film ”was wonderful, just wonderful,” she said. ”Henry was funny.

”They’re all so cute and funny, and they’re familia. It was awesome.”

Richard Cedillo, who played with the San Angelo band Los Tejanos, said the movie hit home.

”It brought back a lot of memories,” he said.

Evans also was pleased.

”It blew me away,” she said. ”It went above and beyond what I expected. They went deep into their history to the present.

”If they showed it again, right now, I’d go right back and see it again.”

Copyright 2006, San Angelo Standard-Times. All Rights Reserved.
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Young, Old Hear The New

By BRYAN RUSSELL
San Angelo Standard Times
March 24, 2006

AUSTIN - More than 250 Los Lonely Boys friends and fans crammed into the tiny Mexic Arte Museum on Congress Street, where they were treated to a private concert after last week’s screening of Hector Galan’s documentary ”Los Lonely Boys: Cottonfields and Crossroads.”

The documentary, which chronicles the Boys’ struggles and rise to fame, premiered at Austin’s annual South by Southwest Film and Music Festival.

The body heat grew dense as concertgoers with gray streaks in their hair and fans with rings through their lips squeezed together under hot lamps that illuminated contemporary Mexican acrylic paintings. A steady buzz of voices echoed off the gallery walls, making one conversation indistinguishable from the next.

The crowd huddled to the front of the gallery space as San Angeloans Henry, Jojo and Ringo Garza stepped on the small stage.

”What’s going on, everybody?” lead guitarist Henry Garza said.

The crowd cheered.

”I said, ‘What’s going on, everybody?’ ” he repeated.

The audience roared louder.

”I said, ‘What’s …’ Nah, just kidding,” he said. ”We’ve been working on an album for a while now. We finished it up about a week ago. We’re going to give it a shot now.”

The Boys played songs from their new album, including the first single, ”Diamonds.”

Veronica Evans, of Austin, a member of Los Lonely Boys’ La Onda Street Team, a fan group that promotes shows at the local level, said the new album is rumored for a June release.

Classic Stacy Adams shoes danced on the polished hardwood floor alongside weathered Doc Marten boots as a testament to the band’s intergenerational fan base. A man held up a half-empty glass of white wine toward the stage and tilted it slightly in a toast to the Boys.

The band paused after two songs.

”Y’all digging it so far?” bassist Jojo Garza asked.

The packed house shouted and applauded.

”How’s everybody’s spring break going?” Henry Garza asked. ”Right on, right on. It’s still going on, I hope.”

As the Garzas continued playing in the museum, other South by Southwest celebrants assembled along Congress Street to catch a fireworks show. Green and purple fireworks exploded in the night and glittered against the Austin skyline.

Meanwhile at Mexic Arte, several Los Lonely Boys fans were hearing the new material for the first time. Evans, however, remembered some of the songs from shows she saw in San Antonio and Houston in November.

”I absolutely loved them all,” she said. ”The Boys are sticking to their guns and showing their originality. As you can guess, we are anxious for the new CD to come out.”

See them live

Los Lonely Boys are playing a few shows in Texas before they head to other parts of the country. The remaining Texas tour dates are:

Laredo - Laredo Entertainment Center, April 5

Odessa - Dos Amigos Cantina, April 6

Lubbock - Canyon Amphitheater, April 7

Tickets available at loslonelyboys.org.
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At the festival: Is Dan a fan?
WFAA.COM
Dallas/Fort Worth
Channel 8
09:32 AM CST on Sunday, March 19, 2006

IS DAN A FAN?

Have you ever taken a dive into a sea of drunk people? It’s called Friday night at South by Southwest, which happened to fall on St. Patrick’s Day. Some of what we saw amid the revelry:

Dan Rather was in the crowd Friday at the world premiere of a documentary about the rise of San Angelo band Los Lonely Boys. Directed by Hector Galán, Los Lonely Boys: Cottonfields and Crossroads tells the story of how brothers Ringo, Henry and Jojo Garza went from playing Johnny Cash covers with their dad in small clubs to winning a Grammy and being one of Willie Nelson’s favorite bands.

Family pictures, performance clips and humorous interviews paint vivid portraits of all involved in the Boys’ story. No release date yet, but a must-see for fans of Texas blues and rock. Later at a private party, the Garzas played some new songs and mingled with friends and fans.

Centro-matic singalong

It makes a heart melt a little to witness the Maggie Mae’s crowd sing along with nearly every song at Centro-matic’s set. From “Flashes and Cables” to the new one, “Calling Thermatico,” die-hard fans of the 10-year-old Denton band hung on every Will Johnson word. Oh, and serious props to drummer Matt Pence. Amazing. And mighty cool to have Drive-By Truckers’ guitar whiz Jason Isbell sitting in on guitar.

Hunter Hauk

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Los Lonely Boys Documentary in the Making

Lonely at the top
CURRENT, San Antonio, TX
By M. Solis 12/22/2004

The Garza Brothers, also known as Los Lonely Boys, will be the subject of a documentary due out next year. The San Angelo-based trio has been nominated for four Grammy Awards.

Filmmaker Hector Galán documents the stunning rise of Los Lonely Boys

After producing the landmark documentary Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement and, more recently, the slept-on Visiones series, San Angelo native Hector Galán has set his sights on the biggest musical act ever to come out of his hometown.

The Garza brothers - Henry, Jojo, and Ringo - are collectively known as Los Lonely Boys, a blazing West Texas, Latino-rock trio which has bum-rushed the industry and is up for four Grammys this year, including Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal by a Duo or Group, and Record of the Year. Galán is currently researching and shooting interviews for his Los Lonely Boys documentary and is looking toward a fall 2005 release. We caught up with him in his Austin office to reflect on his favorite band’s incredible rise.

Current: How did you meet the boys and what was your initial impression of them?

Hector Galán: A lot of my relatives and I went to go see them to support our San Angelo group, and I was stunned. I was blown away completely when I heard them and I knew at that moment that I wanted to do something with them.

At that point, they had some very diehard fans that knew about them but they were relatively unknown on both a citywide and national level. Slowly but surely with the release of their CD, they just took off. I think the reason why, and it was what I felt when I saw them, is that these guys are the real deal. They’re not packaged. They’re not created. They’re extremely talented as musicians and as writers of their own material.

“They’re sort of like a throwback in that they’re very unique in their Pachuco style. ” Hector Galán

People just have this sort of connection to them because they sense that. Being that they’re honest in what they say and who they are, and they don’t pretend, I think people like that. I think at first, the music is hard to define. Some people were calling it derivative and other people were calling it totally original. But if you listen to their music, it truly reflects, I think, the whole Mexican-American experience of a lot of different influences and thatís basically who we are.

Current: In essence, what is the story of the documentary you’re working on with them?

HG: The documentary I’m working on, I call it Cotton Fields and Crossroads. That’s actually one of their songs, and it’s inspired by the cotton fields and crossroads of West Texas. Of course, a lot of their family, and a lot of Mexican-American families have that connection to the cotton field.

I think through the story that we’re doing with Los Lonely Boys, is knowing a little bit of the back story, knowing a little bit of the Mexican-American struggle to give the viewer that knowledge of where these kids came from. What were some of the influences that influenced them as Mexican-Americans from West Texas, because if you listen to the music, it’s very distinctive. I think that what they’re doing is bridging the gap. Here you have today several generations later, a group that’s being embraced by mainstream America whereas a few generations back we were separated, and it was from our music to our communities.

Current: What are some of the things to which you attribute to their unbelievable success?

HG: I think their success, of course, a lot of it has to do with their music. Their music is unique but accessible. Right now there’s such a void in the rock genre that people are just totally engaged in the audience, as well as the fact that they put on a great show. They know what people like and what they want.

Secondly, I think the fact that here are these three Mexican-American brothers, something that you don’t see hardly at all. We’ve had Santana and Los Lobos but very few in that particular genre, and I think there’s just something very unique about that. That is part of that phenomenon, and the fact that theyíre brothers. They’re sort of like a throwback in that they’re very unique in their Pachuco style and Pachuco influences with their Stacy Adams. It’s sort of a tribute to their dad who’s part of that Pachuco subculture which was a whole different onda. It’s a subculture and the fact that they flaunt that gives them yet another stamp of uniqueness.

Current: Do you sense that because they’re brothers they have a unique kind of musical telepathy?

HG: I think that’s very much part of it. Through their unspoken gestures, they just know where they’re going, in terms of when they’re performing onstage and so forth, they’re just as one. These three brothers are as one. Their harmonizing certainly shows that. They’re incredible musicians, taught from their dad, but they add a lot themselves.

I think as brothers it just makes them that whole. Just being with them there’s this real magic because they’re not only talented onstage, but they’re engaging, they’re funny. I think what keeps them together is the power that they’re family. Talking to the mom, talking to the extended family, they always say that, ‘We’re familia,’ and that’s what keeps them strong.

You always hear about bands breaking up and this and that but these guys, they survived and they struggled together in the worst of times. They were very poor and they were playing in places that sometimes wouldn’t even pay them, maybe just give them something to eat. So to see the incredible success they’re having, and the beautiful thing is that it really doesn’t get to their heads. I think it’s a reflection of their roots. .

By M. Solis

I have been doing indie music docs that look at Mexican American influences on Texas music primarily conjunto and Tejano, which are American music genres native to Texas. I had been wanting to do a story on Mexican American music from West Texas where I’m from. I heard about a band of three young brothers called Los Lonely Boys from my hometown of San Angelo in West Texas that I should check out. A few months passed, and I finally got a chance to go see the boys perform at an intimate music venue in Austin, the Saxon Pub. It was at that moment watching them perform an amazing rendition of their song Cottonfields and Crossroads that I felt an immediate connection. I knew I had to tell their story. For a filmmaker, the timing couldn’t have been any better as I was able to capture what became their rise in the American music scene. This was a time when the stars aligned in the boys’ favor and things finally started happening for them after so many years of struggle-yet it seemed to be happening suddenly and quickly. This was an innocent and magical time in their rise- and that was part of what I was able to capture in this film.

To me, Los Lonely Boys have a unique West Texas sound that is reminiscent of music I listened to growing up in San Angelo. It was a sound created by a people with a dual identity, that of Mexican and American. Through their musical performances I was able to tell a story with deep West Texas Mexican roots. The music of the three Garza brothers provoked in me a profound sense of identity. I understood where the influences of their music come from. It’s a music born of the working class.

Los Lonely Boys are weaving their experiences of West Texas and those of their family into a new American musical genre they call “Texican.” In a cut-throat music industry where image and marketing are the cornerstones of any successful musical act, it’s refreshing to see Los Lonely Boys keeping true to their roots with their “pachuco” style and music that pays homage to their people, to their past. Theirs is a rock n roll that is unapologetically Mexican American and supremely real. Theirs is a music of West Texas Mexican Americans.
- Hector Galán

Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX)
October 9, 2004 Section: Life & Arts Edition: FINAL Page: 1F

Discrimination fueled career of filmmaker

DAVID SEDENO Star-Telegram Staff Writer

AUSTIN–Hector Galan had heard the stories about his Latino friends being kicked out of nightclubs in and around Lubbock. Wrong hair. Wrong clothes. Wrong look, they were told. Then, one night, it happened to him.

As he stood near the dance floor, a bouncer told him he was not welcome and escorted him out. He didn’t offer a reason, but Galan had no doubt that it was because of his skin color. Something changed in him that night in 1979. And soon enough, he would go about trying to change something in the world. “You would go to a club and you either were not wearing the right color of shirt or your jeans weren’t French cut or your hair was too long,” said Galan, who was working in Lubbock after graduating from Texas Tech. “They would come up with all kinds of reasons not to let you in, but I never thought it would happen to me. “But it did happen to me, and I was really mad. I felt that I had to do something about it.” Armed with a video camera, Galan returned to the club and to several others and produced Disco Discrimination, a documentary that examined Lubbock’s public-accommodation laws. The program, which aired on the local public television station, prompted the City Council to adopt anti-discrimination laws. “There were a lot of people who were mad that they were being told they couldn’t bar people from entering places of business,” Galan said. That first documentary launched Galan to a career as one of America’s most-respected independent producers. He has focused his camera lens and director’s eye on Latinos across the United States as well as in Mexico, Cuba and Central America. He has produced hundreds of documentaries or short stories on the often-overlooked role Latinos played in building the United States. “We weren’t important when people were putting up exhibits at museums,” said Galan, now 51 and living in Austin. “We were the workers, part of the hired help, and today, when we discover the contributions and impacts that Latinos had in building this country, it’s important to document it.

Finding his focus

Galan hit the documentary scene during “the Decade of the Hispanic,” when major corporations, retailers and political candidates began to notice the effect the ethnic group could have on the country. Helped by the newfound interest, he received funding from foundations and other private enterprises. He dug for anecdotes, interviewed people who witnessed historic events and unearthed rare footage thought to have been lost. “His professionalism and achievement in producing entertaining prime-time PBS programs that reach millions of people has made him a role model,” said Moctesuma Esparza, a producer of the feature film Selena and the Civil War epics Gettysburg and Of Gods and Generals. “He’s one of the few Chicanos who has attained the level of recognition as a filmmaker who continuously works on PBS, and that makes him unique. He’s a trailblazer for having been able to achieve that, knocking down the walls for others to come in.” One of Galan’s latest projects, Visiones, is scheduled to air Sunday on PBS. The six-part series looks at Latino arts and culture. Another project, for the History Channel, chronicles the historic Cinco de Mayo battle near Puebla, Mexico, where Mexican peasants defeated a superior French force in 1862. The program, which airs Saturday, examines how Cinco de Mayo celebrations were brought to the United States by people fleeing the Mexican Revolution between 1910 and 1920. It also touches on the marketing and merchandising phenomenon surrounding the date as advertisers seek to penetrate the burgeoning U.S. Latino market. By 2008, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia, Latinos will number more than 50 million, and their purchasing power will reach upwards of $1 trillion. But the battle for equality — fought so hard by young Mexican-Americans during the so-called Chicano movement that swept the Southwest in the 1960s and ’70s — continues, Galan said. “The whole Chicano movement, as we knew it, obviously is over. We just moved in different directions, including business,” he said.

An editor and humanitarian

Galan, who grew up in San Angelo, fully embraced the movement after earning his telecommunications degree at Texas Tech. His co-workers at the public broadcasting station in Lubbock didn’t look kindly on his decision. “I was called a pinko-commie, just for being part of the movement,” he said. “In the end, that experience and what happened to me at the club led to me wanting to do something that had an impact on an audience.” His program was called Aztlan. The name of the mythical birthplace of the Aztecs, Mexico’s indigenous people, Aztlan was the movement’s rallying cry. “We decided to do the program in Spanish, so that way the management didn’t know what we were saying and they couldn’t pull us off the air,” he said. Galan eventually moved to Boston to work on a new PBS program called Frontline. “What really impressed me about Hector was that he had the incredible ability to get close to people, everyday people,” said Michael Sullivan, Frontline’s executive producer. “He has the rare ability to be able to capture something in his camera and shape it in the editing room, and he has the exceptional ability of being as much a humanitarian as an editor.” By 1983, Galan was tiring of the pace of documentaries. He longed to return to Texas and to earn financial independence. He ventured out on his own. He and a camera crew followed Cuban exile Tony Guernica, who was returning to Cuba for the first time since he had left at age 10. “When I look at what Hector does, there is a great deal of feeling and humanity behind it, and, oftentimes, it gives you a deeper understanding of an issue or topic than just the facts themselves,” said Guernica, now 53 and general manager of the Univision station in Orlando, Fla. “There is a very human quality in everything that he does.” Galan said that, as he nears retirement, the time has come to be choosy about his work. He is negotiating a project on the life of San Antonio Archbishop Patrick Flores, the Catholic Church’s first Mexican-American bishop. He considers himself not only a filmmaker but a teacher and, somewhere deep inside, a radical who wanted to change the world through the stories of his people. “People ask me, ‘Why didn’t you go to Hollywood?’. I guess I could have,” he said, “but I liked doing these stories that are close to me, and when audiences see them, I see how much they love them.”

Where to watch

Two programs produced and directed by Austin’s Hector Galan are scheduled to air this weekend. * Cinco de Mayo, about the historic battle on May 5, 1862, near Puebla, Mexico, airs at 6 p.m. Saturday on the History Channel. * Visiones, a series on Latino arts and culture, airs at 9:30 p.m. Sunday on KERA/Channel 13.

Copyright 2004 Star-Telegram, Inc.

Emmy Magazine
August 1999

(Excerpt from article in Emmy on four producers of national programs)

Far Afield
By Karen Mesterton-Gibbons

Austin, Texas. Minneapolis, Minnesota. Blountstown, Florida. Kittery, Maine. Nice places to live, but seemingly inhospitable places from which to begin successful national production companies. That is, unless you have the drive and creativity of the four independent producers profiled here.
Each member of this quartet has overcome regional prejudices- including, in some cases, his or her own- to produce unique, award-winning programs for a multitude of national broadcast and cable outlets. How have they accomplished it? And now that they’ve had success, why don’t they leave for larger markets? Although, they’re reasons differ slightly, they share the same focus: they value the quality of their lives as much as the quality of their work.

The Southwest
Hector Galán
Galán Productions, Inc.

Hector Galán, forty-five, grew up in San Angelo, Texas, in a bilingual household. Luck was with him when, after high school, he applied for a job as a cameraman at the local TV station- the person doing the hiring wasn’t a local.
“I probably wouldn’t have gotten the job because I was Mexican-American, but he didn’t have those hang-ups. Once I got my foot in the door, I became a fast learner- I got the bug.”
While at Texas Tech University, he was hired by KCBD, an NBC affiliate in Lubbock, eventually becoming a news director. When he graduated, the university hired him as a producer. He created and produced Aztlan, a weekly Chicano-themed news and public affairs show, and then produced Happenings, a show for the African-American community.
Later Galán moved to Austin to work on Checking It Out, a bilingual program for Hispanic teens that aired nationally on PBS. Starting as a production assistant, he ended up as senior producer. “I was able to work with Aida Barrera, one of the first Latinas pioneering television on PBS,” he says. “She let me do a thirty-minute film on gang violence in Chicago.”
That film was seen by a group in Boston, and in 1982 Galán went to work on a documentary series just taking off on PBS- Frontline, with Jessica Savitch as anchor.
“I did the third Frontline of the first season, and I went on to do eleven of them.
Galán stayed in Boston for a couple of years, but he missed Texas and wanted to return. “I felt out of place,” he explains.
He resigned his position at Frontline in 1984 and headed back to Texas. On the way, he stopped in Washington, D.C. where the National Council of La Raza hired him to make Cuba: A Personal Journey- his first documentary as an independent. It aired as a special on PBS. Back in Austin, Galán started his company, Galán Productions, Inc., out of a bedroom in his home and began working with Frontline as an indie producer. “Sometimes I pinch myself,” he says “because it is very, very hard to sustain a company on long-form documentaries.”
For his more than twenty-five productions, which include Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement and New Harvest, Old Shame, he has won numerous awards including a CINE Golden Eagle and many festival awards.
When he started his company, Galán brought in crews from Chicago and Boston, but after a few years he identified talented locals. “I’ve hired practically everybody in town,” he says. Today he has four permanent employees and “a really good support network.”
But there’s more to the job than filmmaking. “I wear a business hat, schmoozing corporate types, attending conferences, meeting legislators, and trying to find ways into corporate American. It can take up to three years to fund a project.”
Galán also writes, directs, and occasionally edits. He is currently working on The Children of Las Colonias, an hour long, $1-million documentary funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Intended for PBS, it examines families and children who live in dreadful conditions in U.S. communities along the Mexican border.
And he has received final funding for another documentary, Accordion Dreams, about the musical style known as conjunto.
Galán is thinking about ownership of his programs. “You may share in ancillary sales, but in the end it’s not yours,” he says. Of the films produced by series staffers.
That’s why I don’t do Frontlines anymore- they were challenging, but there were totally funded. I’m moving more into markets after broadcast, like schools and home video sales. The day that I stop learning or feel jaded, then it’s time to open my hamburger joint.”
But flipping burgers seems far on the horizon. Galán has yet another two-hour program, The Border, airing nationally on PBS in September.
“Texas is my home. I’m a Tejano,” says Galán, adding that he’s proud to raise his three children in his home state. “There are so many stories here I want to tell, so many parts of the culture that I love. That’s what’s kept me here.”

AUSTIN CHRONICLE
REEL AUSTIN STORIES
August 16, 1998
by Jerry Johnson
(Excerpt from article profiling Austin-based documentary producers)

Hector Galán. Austin’s documentary filmmaking maverick. He has run his own independent production company for 14 years, produced 35 national prime-time PBS specials (including Chicano!, Songs of the Homeland, and Vaquero: The Forgotten Cowboy), and was a founding board member of ITVS, one of the country’s leading funding sources for non-commercial documentary cinema. And he’s done it all as a Latino filmmaker who, through a shrewd business acumen and sheer force of will, has successfully fought to tell traditionally underrepresented stories the way he wants to tell them. “I have a passion for particular subject matter that’s close to my heart - ‘that’ being I’m Latino,” Galán explains. “A lot of these stories that I’ve been involved in would have otherwise never gotten made, or certainly not had the perspective that I can bring to this material because I’m close to it. You also bring the craft to the material, what the mentors have taught you, and by combining all of these elements into the piece, you end up with a wonderful film that becomes part of the national record. These projects are evergreens: They can air forever.”

Galán began operating from Austin during a time, in 1984, when there was no local documentary scene. As Richard Lewis remembers, “There were many years during which commercially viable documentary began with Hector, and ended with Hector.” In fact, during those early years the production talent in the area was so sparse that Galán was forced to fly in crews from Boston or Chicago to work on his films, but doing so became too difficult and expensive, and he soon began to search for an alternative. “I decided to start developing local people; giving them a shot and just working with them. And there was an attitude by people in Boston and New York toward us, almost condescending, about whether we could meet their technical specs. Of course, we not only met their specs - we went beyond what they ever anticipated.” The list of now-successful filmmakers who worked for him early in their careers is stunning: Vance Holmes, Tom Taylor, Henry Miller, Lee Daniel, Clark Walker, Paige Martinez, Susanne Mason, and more. So you thought there was only one film university in town? Welcome to U. of Galán.

‘Pocho’ Patchwork
AFs’s Texas Doc Tour brings the formidable Héctor Galán and his “Visiones’ to One World Theatre

AUSTIN CHRONICLE- September 2003
BY ANNE S. LEWIS

Come on out to the One World Theatre for a sneak peek at Héctor Galán’s next epic project — Visiones — a terrific odyssey through the patchwork quilt of Latino culture in the U.S. of A. Galán has been dubbed the “Hispanic Ken Burns” for his many PBS-broadcast films on wide-ranging issues involving the country’s Latino population, including Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement (1996). He’ll screen 10 segments (about 70 minutes) of Visiones, as a work-in-progress that, when completed, will be broadcast as a three-hour PBS special sometime next year.

Be prepared to fill some gaps in your knowledge of the roots of familiar Latino contributions to the American culture scene, music being one of the more obvious ones. Visiones has segments on the Cuban “Miami Sound” and Lalo Guerrero, one of the fathers, in the Forties, of Chicano music of the Southwest. There’s also a segment on prolific indie filmmaker Willie Varela. Then there are artists in Latino communities from coast-to-coast who are doing things creative, outré or mainstream, that chances are you’re unfamiliar with: Ever heard of Rokafella, the New York hip-hop dancer? Or Evelyn Cisneros, prima ballerina with the San Francisco Ballet? “We’re so narrow in our thinking,” says Galán. “As a Chicano in the Southwest, for instance, I see the world in a particular way — my relationships to Anglos and my place here, but, of course, the Puerto Rican experience in New York or the Cuban exile experience in Miami is totally different.”

La carpa, meaning “tent,” is a little-known but fascinating form of traveling theatrical entertainment that began in the Twenties and spanned more than 30 years. La Carpa Garcia, profiled in a Visiones segment with interviews from surviving members as well as terrific archival photography, is historically hailed as one of the more popular and long-standing Mexican tent shows from this era. This group traveled and performed in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas, eventually settling in San Antonio. “Carpa was early vaudeville,” explains Galán. “They did circus, comedy, drama, Greek tragedy, and parody — which was probably one of their most important roles, because, for many, they were the source of news of what was going on in the world.”

The Carpa segment features UT drama department playwright Amparo Garcia-Crow, who is developing a musical production called La Carpa Garcia because she finds carpa an excellent vehicle for filling the vacuum of meaningful Latino acting roles for students, as well as for fleshing out and portraying realistically — warts and all — significant, if less well-known, characters in Latino history. One such historical figure portrayed in Garcia-Crow’s Carpa production is Chicano lawyer Gus Garcia, the first Latino to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, whose stellar career as an advocate was cut short by his alcoholism.

Then there’s the widely syndicated Latino cartoonist Lalo Lopez Alcaraz. The guy who takes a lot of heat from Latinos because he tells it like it is, pulling no punches. He’s got a Web site called Pocho.com, pocho being the derogatory term that Mexican nationals often fling at Mexican-Americans for leaving their native country. “Alcaraz represents people like me,” laughs Galán, “people who have been criticized for decades as squatters in this country, those who have created their own art, their own language, like Chicanese. To a lot of people, being called a pocho is an insult, but Alcaraz took this idea of pochismo and made it something to be proud of.”

To assemble Visiones’ vast cultural mosaic, Galán worked closely with the National Association of Latino Art and Culture and then Latino producers all over the country, developing the stories that would make it into the final cut. As executive producer, he then sent out a single production crew of three to each venue, crisscrossing the country in a van to film the segments. “For me, it was a great learning experience to bring this together,” says Galán, “because, while Latinos in this country share a lot — a language and a lot of traditions — there are a lot of differences; we’re not homogenous, even though a lot of people tend to think of ‘Latino’ as a big umbrella.” end story

Segments of Visiones: Latino Art and Culture screen as part of the Texas Documentary Tour on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 7pm, at One World Theatre (7701 Bee Caves Rd.). Héctor Galán will conduct a Q&A after the screening. Tickets — $6 for current Austin Film Society members and new members joining before the screening, as well as students; $8 for nonmembers — are available only through One World Theatre (329-6753) by phone or at the venue one hour prior to screening. For more information, check www.austinfilm.org.

Hector Galán- The Documentary Craft
AUSTIN CHRONICLE
by Marc Savlov

At age 44, Hector Galán may not yet fall under the “Elder Statesman of Documentary Filmmaking” heading, but he’s on the verge. Since 1972, when he joined the San Angelo CBS affiliate straight out of high school, this inspired and inspiring Texan has created some of the best documentaries around. Starting with 1978’s Disco Discrimination — which focused on the problems young Latinos encountered in the nearly all-white discotheques of Lubbock — Galán has turned out a steady stream of well over 30 pieces, many for the acclaimed PBS series Frontline. In 1984, needing to get out on his own and away from the rigors of Boston and WGBH (where Frontline is created), he formed Galán Productions here in Austin and immediately began production on such noted films as The Hunt for Pancho Villa, Songs of the Homeland, and the acclaimed, five-part Chicano! series. Now, as part of the Texas Documentary Tour film series (co-sponsored by the Austin Film Society, the UT Film Department, SXSW Film, and The Austin Chronicle), Galán will be screening and answering questions about his explosive 1989 Frontline segment Shakedown in Santa Fe, a harrowing glimpse inside the walls of the Santa Fe Maximum Security Prison.

I met with the amiable and animated filmmaker at the West Austin offices of Galán Productions, and spoke with him about his life and work to date.

Austin Chronicle: Can you fill me in a little on how you got started in documentary filmmaking?

Hector Galán: The executive producer of Frontline, David Fanning, brought me up to Boston, and I started working there with Jessica Savitch. I worked up there for a couple of years, and at that point I really had the independent bug, I wanted to go independent, so I just took off. Boston is great, but I like it here, you know? I like scorpions.

I came back and started the company [Galán Productions] in 1984 here in Austin, and worked in documentaries exclusively ever since. In long-form, we’ve produced about 30 films. We’ve practically employed everybody in town. Last year, we had 35 people working for us — everybody that I could get my hands on.

A lot of folks who have gone on to become real successful in terms of TV have worked with me in the past, here in town. I’m still at it, I think it’s amazing that I’ve been able to survive since 1984 in the documentary genre. It’s a closed field. It’s very hard to get in. It’s very hard to get money. A lot of people know each other in the industry, but I actually went along for a number of years without anybody knowing I was here in Austin. I did that primarily because I was involved in a lot of news and public affairs programming — I didn’t want people to find me, because I wasn’t protected. You know, some people don’t like what you do, they get angry. I did a piece in Arkansas, I was in Little Rock for a long time right when Clinton was taking off, and he didn’t like this piece that I did. It was a show called Who Cares About Children?, and basically, it was looking at the whole troubled foster care system in the state of Arkansas. Ironically, last year I was invited to the White House [to screen his PBS series Chicano!]. I thought I was going to get kicked out when Clinton saw me, because he must have known. Maybe not. Who knows?

AC: Frontline is such a great outlet for documentaries. How was it working for them?

HG: Well, Frontline is the only hour-long long-form national news and public affairs series that’s there on an ongoing basis. These films, you don’t find these films on network television. Maybe HBO does some, but HBO has a real strong entertainment value to it. Their rules are sex, violence, and crime, and of course that’s what sells. But they may push it a little too much, I think. Frontline deals with the policy aspects as well, and that may not sound sexy, but it’s important. And that’s what PBS really does best. The support really isn’t always there, however. I think the stations are scared of Frontline sometimes, and I think they don’t really want it. They want Lawrence Welk and things like that. Frontline gets in trouble. But that’s what we’re supposed to do. It’s PBS — it’s supposed to be shielded from advertiser interests, so that you can talk about these sorts of things.

AC: Shakedown in Santa Fe originally aired on Frontline, right? How did that come about and what can viewers expect from the film?

HG: Right, that aired on Frontline about nine years ago, but through my career I can pick maybe four or five that are my favorites, and this is one of them. I don’t think that a film like this could air again, nationally, because it was pretty risqué for its time, mainly because of the language and the violence that’s involved.

What’s interesting about this film is that it’s a process film. It’s one of these vérité films that, when you plant yourself inside of a prison for a month, things are going to happen. And they happened. And I was there. And the camera was there. So, it’s a day in the life of a maximum security prison and the power struggles within that environment. It’s like its own community.

AC: Why the Santa Fe setting?

HG: The reason I picked the Santa Fe Maximum Security Prison was that it was the scene of one of the most violent prison uprisings that has ever happened. That was in 1980, when prisoners literally took over the prison. The death and mayhem and destruction was just unbelievable. It hadn’t been seen before. What happened was that the prisoners completely revolted because of maltreatment and abuses by the guards and took hostages and the killing began. None of the guards died, but they were all horribly brutalized. If you can imagine severing somebody’s head and putting it on a stick and then going up to a prison guard and saying, “This is what is going to happen to you.” I mean, it does something to you psychologically. Those guards were never the same after that.

The question that we raise in the documentary is: “Is it safer now that we’ve had this prison reform, or has it gone too far?” And, eventually, we answer that, but throughout the course of the piece, there are these characters that we get to know. The jailers, the prisoners — it was very interesting to get in there and get closer to some of the people in the white gangs, because I am a minority.

AC: How’d you swing that?

HG: When I first met with them, they told me they would talk but not about what I wanted to talk about, which was the riot. Eventually, though, as we got to know each other, they realized that they did have a story to tell, and I was there, so I featured one of those convicts in the film. Eventually, they came around and opened up.

AC: Has funding for these projects been tough to come by? It’s hard enough securing funding for mainstream films. Are documentaries that much harder to get off the ground?

HG: I was part of a golden age of major federal lovefest funding, and there really was a commitment, even earlier in the Eighties when the Department of Education was really trying to create this multicultural presence in media by funding programs and bringing in the historically under-served audiences, people who had not had the power to create their own reflection of their community and society. And that’s still happening today. Even now, you can look at network television and hardly ever see a Hispanic face there. Something’s wrong.

Something that is a reality and something that is changing is the fact that Hispanics are growing in incredible numbers. Once you start looking at a $350 billion consumer market, and the loyalty of that market, and trying to reach that market in economic terms, then you’ll have an impact. That’s the only time it’s going to change.

People like me, in the documentary world, other emerging filmmakers creating their own stamp, will bring more and more of these films to fruition.

AC: What about your minority status? Has that helped or hindered your filmmaking?

HG: A lot of times, they try to make you more of a minority than you are. I, for instance, would never be the minority producer or the minority that does just the minority stuff. On the other hand, a lot of the work that I do, there’s this incredible void in terms of the long-form documentary, capturing history, and telling stories that are important to tell; stories that I, as a Mexican-American, Chicano, Latino, whatever, can tell. I want to do these stories because I want to do them, not because I have to do them. So there’s a real fine line there in terms of do you do only minority films or do you do all films? I happen to want to do stories that I feel need to be told. Otherwise there’s no point.

AC: Here’s a twofold question for you: What’s your goal as a documentary filmmaker, and what’s your goal as a Hispanic documentary filmmaker? Is there a difference there?

HG: That’s really not a twofold question at all, it’s one question, because, yes, I did do documentaries on African-Americans; I’ve done documentaries on Anglos, Cubans, you name it. I’ve done it all simply for the craft, because I believe in the craft of documentary filmmaking. I think that these are stories that in many ways are more powerful than fictional films, because these are real stories, real people. For years we’ve heard of the death of the documentary form, we’ve been told that they’re going to disappear, but it seems like now, with so many channels to fill on television, that the documentary film is re-emerging big time. And they’ve never really gone away.

Simply working in that area — in documentary filmmaking — is challenging and exciting. It really is, and that’s why I’m still doing it after all these years. I always learn something, whether it be in editing, or new shooting styles, or collaborating with someone.

As a Hispanic documentary filmmaker, I have a real strong interest in capturing history that hasn’t been told. For instance, when I was growing up I’d see Acapulco Reds, Bandito caricatures, and all this stuff about Pancho Villa, and so when I had an opportunity to create an impact, I did a film on Pancho Villa for the American audience as part of PBS’ The American Experience. It was called The Hunt for Pancho Villa, and that allowed me to talk about that history so that people could have an understanding of why this guy practically went to war with Mexico, with 200,000 troops stationed on the border and with General “Black Jack” Pershing going in looking for this guy to kill him… somehow that disappears into history, and I want to bring that back. Stories of the Southwest, stories of Mexican-Americans, there are all these wonderful stories that need to be told.

I know that a television show isn’t going to change the world, but it can give you a glimpse. An insider’s glimpse. And I think that’s very important.
Shakedown in Santa Fe screens as part of the Texas Documentary Tour on Wednesday, October 8, 7pm (doors open at 6:30pm), at the Alamo Drafthouse & Cinema (409 Colorado). Hector Galán will introduce the film and hold a Q&A session afterwards.

THE TEXAS OBSERVER
Accordions Live Again
at La Villita
By Melissa Sattley

Accordion Dreams
Directed by Hector Galán

San Benito-Austin-based documentary filmmaker Hector Galán couldn’t have picked a better backdrop than the historic La Villita dancehall and the Rio Grande Valley-birthplace of conjunto music-to present Accordion Dreams, his latest documentary. The film traces the arc of conjunto’s history from the early legends of the 1930s to the innovative young musicians who are keeping the art form alive today. In its heyday, from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, La Villita was the heart of conjunto music in the Rio Grande Valley, the place to hear squeezebox super-stars Valerio Longoria, Narciso Martinez (”El Huracán del Valle”), and Santiago Jimenez. In the late ’70s the dancehall closed because of dwindling audiences and economic decline in the neighborhood. Now city officials want to rehab the building and turn it into a conjunto museum. But on the night of the Valley premier, La Villita’s deceased owner, Don Fernando Sanchez, seemed to be playing a practical joke. An hour before the film was supposed to begin, the power went out in half of San Benito, including La Villita. “Don Fernando turned the power off because the dance floor is too small,” an elderly audience member confided to her friend.
City officials quickly pulled out their cell phones. Galán and his wife, Evy Ledesma, lit luminarias on the sidewalk to prove to hundreds of conjunto fans-many of whom had driven from as far away as Houston and Dallas-that the show would go on. Across the street, cantina regulars carried their drinks out to the sidewalk and wondered aloud about all of the commotion at the old dancehall. Out front, conjunto fans in their sixties and seventies waxed nostalgic about La Villita and the days when they could hear hits like Valerio Longoria’s “El Rosalito” from blocks away, long before they reached the dancehall. San Benito native Manuel Gonzalez, 65, had driven about 300 miles, all the way from Buda, to witness La Villita’s brief revival. “This brings back so many memories,” he said, recalling his days at La Villita in the 1950s. “You would work all week and on the weekends this place was it-you couldn’t believe the musicians you could see here.”
In little less than a half hour, the city’s fire department provided a generator for the film projector and emergency lights to illuminate the dance floor. Even more miraculously, the film started on time at 8:00 p.m.-unusual even in normal circumstances for the Valley.

The documentary film, second in a planned trilogy on the history of Tejano music, follows the travels of the three-row button accordion from its arrival in central Texas with German and Czech immigrants in the early 19th century. The catchy polkas caught the ear of Texas Mexicans, or Tejanos, in the Rio Grande Valley. They adapted the polka into conjunto-the Tejano’s working man blues-a blending of accordion, bajo sexto (12-string guitar), and drums.
Accordion Dreams intermixes the biographies of legendary performers such as Narciso Martinez and Flaco Jimenez (probably the most familiar crossover performer to those not well versed in the music), with footage of live performances by present-day favorites such as Benny Layton and Ruben Vela. Galán then takes a detour to the small, central Texas town of New Braunfels, where Texans of German descent still play the traditional polkas and waltzes that intrigued Tejanos in the last century. But traditional accordion music is slowly dying out among people of German descent in Texas, and now is only occasionally played in retirement communities and at church parties. “Accordion music is being lost throughout the United States and Europe,” Galán explained before the film’s premiere. “There are only small pockets where the traditional music is surviving in places like Louisiana and Texas.”
Austin singer-songwriter Tish Hinojosa narrates the hour-long documentary and Kathy Ragland, a New York-based ethnomusicologist, provides a historical perspective. Conjunto historians, including Amadeo Flores, 68, an accordionist who played with legendary players like Valerio Longoria and Tony de la Rosa, add personal perspectives on the music’s social and cultural roles in the Mexican-American community. From the opening scene, Galán emphasizes that conjunto is still very much alive among music fans. The film begins with 17-year-old Jesse Turner of the small Valley town of Santa Rosa, playing at a high school dance with his band, Estilo. Now 23, Turner is just one of many young accordionists who have taken conjunto, added some rock ‘n’ roll twists and slick dance moves, and made the music more accessible to a younger audience. At the high school dance in Accordion Dreams, the young girls go wild at Turner’s pelvic thrusts and skittering feet. Suddenly the accordion is sexy, and conjunto is no longer just your grandparents’ music-something to be shunned at all costs.
“When I was a kid accordion music was embarrassing,” Ledesma, a Harlingen native, told me. “I’m 41. I grew up in the ’70s and we were into rock ‘n’ roll music in English and trying to fit into the larger culture. Now these kids are into conjunto and they’ve found a way to be true to their own culture and still be Americans.” In the film, older conjunto musicians like Amadeo Flores are pleased that the younger generation has taken an interest in the music. “We teach them and they teach us,” says Flores, of the new conjunto players. “In the old days we played, stopped then sang. Now they do everything all at once.”
Refreshingly, Galán also focuses on the struggle of women pioneers in conjunto music. Eva Ibarra, now in her late ’50s, rips it up in an impromptu performance, as Hinojosa narrates the difficulties Ibarra faced when she was the only woman in a macho musical world. Ibarra started playing conjunto accordion at six; her father would book her in dancehalls around South Texas as a novelty act. As she grew older, however, she was often criticized for playing conjunto accordion, which was viewed as being strictly for men. The bars and nightclubs where she played were considered unseemly for a woman, but Ibarra ignored the naysayers and continued to make records and perform. Today she plays and tours with Hinojosa in the all-woman group, Las Super Tejanas. In Accordion Dreams, musicians Cecilia Saenz, 17, and Victoria Galvan, 15, show that attitudes have progressed greatly since Ibarra was their age, and that conjunto has finally opened up as a viable avenue for young women performers.

Hector Galán is a San Angelo native who has deep roots in the Rio Grande Valley. For decades, he’s focused his lens on the Texas-Mexico border. The first film in his music documentary trilogy, Songs of the Homeland, which won the Top Juror Award at CineFestival in San Antonio in 1995, also focused on the border. Another documentary, The Forgotten Americans, which aired on PBS last fall, portrayed the plight of poverty-stricken families along the border. (Accordion Dreams will also be picked up by PBS, and is slated to air in September.) At first it can be difficult to explain the importance of conjunto to people outside of the border region, says Galán. “People in Washington, D.C. and New York are like, ‘What’s conjunto?’” he says wryly. “It’s the cultural legacy of this region and a significant contribution to American music-even if it is in Spanish.”
At the Valley premier it was obvious that conjunto meant so much more to the audience. The event had an intimate family feel, and there were murmurs of recognition as black-and-white photos of musicians from yesteryear appeared on screen. Older audience members laughed at old dancehall photos and at the outfits and hairstyles that seemed hopelessly outdated. After the premier, several musicians featured in the film performed on La Villita’s stage-the same stage where accordionist Amadeo Flores performed more than 50 years ago. “Back then the dancehall didn’t have a roof,” he recalled. “I remember one night it rained and everyone kept dancing; they didn’t care.” (The roof was added in the late ’60s to make La Villita more comfortable for receptions and weddings, much to the dismay of Flores, who thinks it affects the quality of the sound.)
For Jesse Turner, playing there at the Valley premier with some of the legends of conjunto music was an opportunity to pay homage to his heroes and to his father, a lifelong conjunto fan. But once again, Don Fernando seemed to be playing tricks. The night of the premier Turner had a bad cold and said he wouldn’t sing. But as he launched into his second song and couples began to hit the dance floor, he was carried away by the evening and changed his mind. “I couldn’t help it,” he later explained. “It’s an honor to be here.”

Melissa Sattley is a reporter at The Monitor in McAllen. Flaco Jimenez, Ruben Vela and other accordion wizards can also be heard at the Tejano Conjunto Festival in San Antonio, May 9-13.

MASS COMMUNICATION ALUMNI HONORED

By MATTHEW HENRY
Avalanche-Journal

Bill Dean, executive vice president of the Ex-Students Association, is among four people scheduled to receive an Outstanding Alumni Award from the Texas Tech School of Mass Communications today.

During a homecoming scholarship breakfast in the Merket Alumni Center, the school will honor Dean, an associate professor of mass communications; Hector Galan, owner of Galan Productions in Austin and producer of PBS’ “Front Line”; Mary Lou Kromer, vice president of corporate communications and investor relations at W.R. Grace & Co., in Boca Raton, Fla.; and Col. Virginia Pribyla, head of media relations for the Secretary of Air Force in Washington, D.C.

Breakfast profits will go toward a scholarship endowed by the Lubbock Area Mass Communications Alumni Council.

Dean earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing, master’s administration degree and doctorate in secondary education from Tech. He then worked at Lubbock and Coronado high schools before joining Tech’s mass communications school.

He became director of student publications at Tech in 1967 and director of the Ex-Students Association 10 years later.

Galan received a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications from Tech in 1974. He’s worked in television for nearly 25 years, including an early job as news director of KCBD-TV. “Hispanic Business” recently named him one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in America.

He founded Galan Productions in 1984 and has produced numerous programs for PBS’ award-winning “Frontline” series. In 1996 he completed “Chicano! The History of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement” for PBS. He was invited to the White House for a private screening of the documentary.

Kromer graduated from Tech in 1975 with a journalism degree. She’s now finishing a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Miami.

Kromer worked as a legislative assistant and press secretary for former U.S. Rep. James M. Collins. She also directed public relations at Rockwell International before joining her current firm.

Pribyla left Tech with a journalism degree in 1974 for the Air Force. She was commissioned as a second lieutenant through the Reserve Officer Training Corps program. Her assignments have included directing public affairs for the munitions systems division of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida and heading media relations at the Air Force’s European headquarters at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Pribyla also earned a master’s degree in communication from the University of Oklahoma. The Air Force has showered her with medals, including the Meritorious Service Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal and the Air Force Achievement Medal.

Page created 10/11/97 1:26 AM
Copyright 1997 Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Some material copyright 1997 The Associated Press.

For Immediate Release
LATINO PUBLIC BROADCASTING’S SERIES WINS IMAGEN AWARD FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY

Top Honors Go to Hector Galán’s “Visiones: Latino Art and Culture”

LOS ANGELES, CA, JUNE 20, 2005 — Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB), a non-profit organization funded by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, announced today that “Visiones: Latino Art and Culture,” won the Imagen Award for Best Documentary. Produced by Latino television veteran Hector Galán, the six-part documentary travels throughout the United States, tapping into the often hidden wealth of Hispanic artistry.

“That the first PBS series to focus exclusively on Latino artistic expression in the U.S. won this year’s Imagen Awards is a resounding vote of approval for the work we are doing,” said Luca Bentivoglio, executive director, Latino Public Broadcasting. “‘Visiones: Latino Art and Culture,’ a co-production of Galan Incorprated and The National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, is the type of program that finds a home in public broadcasting, where the ultimate goal is to share unfettered knowledge, art, news or culture with viewers. We are very proud to have funded Hector Galán in this rich, multi-faceted series.”

The Imagen Awards ceremony was held Friday, June 17 at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. A sold-out crowd of celebrities and supporters of the Latino entertainment community attended the black tie gala that recognizes individuals, series as well as films and their contributions to the entertainment industry.

“The tapestry of Latino art is so intricate and diverse, that even a documentary such as ‘Visiones: Latino Art and Culture’ only scratches the surface of what Latinos are creating in our country. I am extremely proud to be a microphone for their work, to document their art, to publicize their culture,” said Hector Galán.

“Visiones: Latino Art and Culture” was one of the first projects LPB supported. Currently, it holds a yearly competition that invites independent producers to submit proposals for funding on Latino-themed programs or series. This year’s 2005 Open Call competition ended on June 6, 2005 with over 100 entries from across the country. Submissions included documentaries, documentary series, experimental, animation, drama and comedy from over 18 states. Winners will be announced in November 2005.

The Imagen Foundation
With financial support from Norman Lear’s Embassy Communications, staff support from NCCJ, the cooperation of many entertainment companies, the leadership of Helen Hernandez and a voluntary advisory committee of professionals and community leaders, the Imagen Awards became a successful enterprise. Since 1985, the Imagen Awards competition has brought out the best and most talented portrayal of Latinos in television and film. For more information on the organization, please visit www.imagen.org.

ABOUT LPB
Created in 1998 by Edward James Olmos and Marlene Dermer, Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) is a non-profit organization funded by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting. LPB’s mission is to support the development, production, post-production, acquisition and distribution of non-commercial educational and cultural television that is representative of or addresses issues of particular interest to U.S. Latinos. These programs are produced for dissemination to public broadcasting stations and other public telecommunication entities. Mr. Olmos is presently LPB’s Chairman of the Board of Directors.

VARIETY, JUNE 20 2005
Latinos fete ‘West,’ Smits
‘Motorcycle’ drives honors at kudofest
By ANNA MARIE DE LA FUENTE

Comedian George Lopez, a hero in the Latino community for fronting his own hit sitcomsitcom on ABC, dominated the 20th Imagen Awards gala Friday at the BevHilton with his sometimes off-color jokes, but major kudos went to “The West Wing”"The West Wing” for primetime series and to thesp Jimmy Smits for his portrayal of a Latino politician in the skeinskein.

In the features category, Walter SallesWalter Salles’ road movie “The Motorcycle Diaries” won a clutch of awards, including pic, director and supporting actor (Rodrigo de la Serna).

Actress nod went to Colombian thesp Catalina Sandino Moreno for her Oscar-nommed perfperf in “Maria Full of Grace.”

“We (Latinos) have come a long, long way,” declared Freddy Rodriguez, who has won Imagen’s supporting TV actor award three years in a row for his portrayal of a funeral director in HBO’s “Six Feet Under.”

“We’re not whining; we’re here,” said Smits, one of the small but growing number of Latinos who are snagging atypical roles in film and TV.

Argentina’s Mia Maestro won a supporting actress award for her perf as a secret agent in ABC’s “Alias.” There was no actor category this year because there were no contenders aside from Gael Garcia BernalGael Garcia Bernal in “The Motorcycle Diaries.”

DocuDocu helmer Hector Galan, whose “Visiones: Latino Art & Culture” won TV docu series, urged audience members to write their congressional reps to protest pending cuts of public broadcasting coin.

Lawrence Bender accepted Imagen’s Humanitarian Award along with helmer Luis MandokiLuis Mandoki, scribe Oscar Torres and co-producer Alejandro Soberon Kuri for their harrowing pic “Innocent Voices,” based on the childhood experience of Torres, who was among many 12- and 13-year-olds conscripted into the army in El Salvador.

And the winners are…
FILM
Best Picture: “The Motorcycle Diaries”
Best Actress: Catalina Sandino Moreno, “Maria Full of Grace”
Best Supporting Actor: Rodrigo de la Serna, “The Motorcycle Diaries”
Best Supporting Actress: Shelbie Bruce, “Spanglish”
Best Director: Walter Salles,” The Motorcycle Diaries”
Best Theatrical Short or Student Film: “Cuco Gomez-Gomez is Dead”
Best Documentary: Visiones: Latino Art & Culture

TELEVISION
Best Primetime Series: “The West Wing”
Best Actor: Jimmy Smits, “The West Wing”
Best Actress: Madeleine Stowe, “Saving Milly”
Best Supporting Actor: Freddy Rodriguez, “Six Feet Under”"Six Feet Under”
Best Supporting Actress: Mia Maestro, “Alias”"Alias”
Best Variety Special: “LATV Live”
Best Children’s Programming: “Nick News With Linda Ellerbee”
Best Local Informational Programming: “Vista L.A.”
Best National Informational Programming: “American Latino T.V.”
Best Live Theatrical Production: “Yo Soy Latina!”

Five outstanding achievement awards were also presented, including:

Creative Achievement Award: Nina Tassler, the first Latina to head a major television network, CBS
Norman Lear Writer’s Award: Jose RiveraJose Rivera, author of the Oscar-nominated screenplay, “The Motorcycle Diaries”
Humanitarian Award: Lawrence BenderLawrence Bender, Luis Mandoki, Oscar Orlando Torres, and Alejandro Soberon Kuri for the realistic portrayal of civil war in El Salvador and its effects on the country’s children in the film “Innocent Voices”
President’s Award: “The Hollywood Reporter” for recognizing the impact of Latino accomplishments within the entertainment industry.
Hennessy Privilège Award: George Lopez, the star and executive producer of the “George Lopez”"George Lopez” show for his outstanding contributions to the Latino community.

Booklist, Vol. 101 No. 16, April 15, 2005:
Visiones: Latino Art & Culture
This well-made six-part documentary examining Latino culture in the U.S. is colorful, enlightening, and a joy to watch. The title exchews voice-over narration in favor of on-camera interviews, archival footage, and snappy editing. The tone is set in the first episode, in which Latino mural artists, Puerto Rican poets, and a controversial editorial cartoonist are explored in downright splashy coverage. The opening section, centering on artists who create large murals on building walls and similar places, begins with a series of quick cuts, showing a collage of people and their art- a perfect way to graphically depict the subject matter. This is a story of Latinos expressing their identity, history, and culture through words, sounds, and the visual arts; some are rebelling, while others are celebrating their rich heritage. The appeal of this documentary is definitely not limited to Latinos; it speaks to a general audience- David Pitt

School Library Journal, May 2005:
Visiones: Latino Art & Culture
Grade 6 Up- In this six-part documentary that aired on PBS in last summer 2004, many facets of Latino art and culture are presented in a fascinating quilt of music, murals, poetry, drama, and dance. Utilizing the talents of Latino producers from around the country, Visiones incorporates unique storytelling, innovative filmmaking, and fresh perspectives to weave an interesting account of the past and its relationship to the present and the future. From murals on the streets of Chicago and Los Angeles to hip hop dancers in New York City, from the Miami Sound to theater in Texas, the series offers a vibrant cross section of the work of Latino artists today and yesterday. Each 30 minute episode presents six to seven stories that will educate, entertain, and electrify viewers by their sheer creative energy. While each segment focuses primarily on similar forms of art or artists, it blends different art forms and shows common historical or cultural themes. Thus the first episode showcases the Latino Mural Movement of the 1960’s with Nuyorican spoken art that emerged in the same time period. Episode four showcases music that ranges from hip hop and Miami Sound to modern dance. Interviews with the artists bring a personal touch and immediacy to the art, and help us to understand how and why they were created. The series incorporates extraordinary archival material to give historical depth to the ongoing work of a new generation of Latino artists. It also examines our diverse Latino communities and how they were able to keep their artistic expressions alive while creating new and unique visions that contribute to art in America. Some of the artists, such as dance pioneer Rudy Perez, Prima Ballerina Evelyn Cisneros, actress Miriam Colon, musician Tito Puente, and singer Selena are familiar to many Americans, but this series introduces the lesser-known Latino art community as well, and shows how the Latino culture has blended Hispanic and American roots to grow and thrive. Well-paced and emotionally stirring, this is an invigorating introduction to Latino art and culture and would be especially useful in studies of Hispanic-American art, literature, and social studies. - MaryAnn Karre, Horace Mann Elementary School, Binghamton, NY

• ITVS Press ReleaseVISIONES: Latino Art & Culture

  Posted: 7/19/04

  “VISIONES: LATINO ART & CULTURE” CAPTURES THE RICH CULTURAL AND ARTISTIC EXPRESSIONS OF LATINOS IN THE UNITED STATES

  From Mural Painters to Break Dancers to Spoken Word Poets Latino Artists Take Center Stage in Special Six-Part Series Austin, TX - VISIONES: LATINO ART & CULTURE is the first PBS series to focus exclusively on atino artistic expression in the United States. This landmark presentation will examine the nation’s diverse Latino communities and how they have been able to keep their artistic expressions alive while creating new and unique visions that contribute to art in America.

  VISIONES: LATINO ART & CULTURE, a special six-part half-hour series, airs nationally on PBS beginning Sunday, September 5, 2004 at 10:30 PM (Check local listings).

  VISIONES is a journey through the music, words, dance, painting and performance of rich Latino cultures made more complex and fascinating by their history in our country. The series explores how contemporary Latino artists continue to build on rich traditions that reflect a unique multi-ethnic experience, taking established art forms and reinventing them, constantly challenging themselves and the communities which nurture them. From New York City’s break-dancers to mural-painters in Los Angeles and Chicago to theater in Texas, the series offers a unique cross section of Latino artists working today.

  VISIONES also examines the origins of Latino art and culture through storytelling and vivid imagery, depicting the struggles and victories that the artists endured to continue their artistic interpretation.

  Hector Galán, Executive Producer and Director of the series states, “VISIONES seeks to go beyond the reductive, one-dimensional, stereotypical imagining of Latinos. Learning about Latino art and culture is learning about what it means to be American today. ”

  Galán is recognized for producing eleven episodes of the award-winning series Frontline and two films for American Experience: Los Mineros and The Hunt For Pancho Villa. He has been producing long form documentaries for the PBS national schedule for over twenty years, including the award-winning four hour public television series Chicano! History of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement (1996).

  Four years in the making, VISIONES is a co-production of Galán Inc. and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC), and is presented by the Independent Television Service (ITVS), with Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) as co-presenter. Funding for VISIONES was also provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Houston Endowment and the Texas Commission on the Arts.

  ---

  The Austin Film Society, One World Theatre,and Austin filmmaker Héctor Galán present

  A Special Screening of VISIONES, LATINO ART AND CULTURE,
  a 3-part documentary produced by Galán for PBS (2004).

  Co-presented by the Radio-Television-Film Department of the University of Texas at Austin and The Austin Chronicle

  September 17 (Wednesday), 7:00 PM at the One World Theatre (7701 Bee Caves Rd).

  Austin audiences have a unique opportunity to be among the first in the nation to see 90 minutes of selections from this exciting, “it’s about time” mosaic of historical and contemporary Latino culture from East Coast to West Coast, Chicago to Miami, and all across the Southwest. The arts of Puertorriqueños, Cubanos, Dominicanos, and Chicanos/Mexicanos shine in all their glory in this extended documentary slated for public airing on PBS in 2004.

  Assisted by some of the finest Latino documentary film producers, both rising and established talent, Galán examines and extols the richness and diversity within Latino culture(s) in America.murals, santeros, New York hip-hop dancers, editorial cartoons, the Miami sound, Puerto Rican and Chicano teatro (theatre), zoot-suited pachuco swing dancers, poetry, la Vírgen de Guadalupe, political art, altars, salsa, the Royal Chicano Air Force and other performance artists, experimental filmmaking in El Paso, Taco Shop poets, and Tejano music. The list is almost overwhelming. Galán is the first to admit that even he learned new things about the widely dispersed Latino cultures as he began editing the segments and creating unexpected juxtapositions.

  Along with the fascinating stories of living artists, Galán and his producers inserted hundreds of historical photographs and films into the programs to reveal some of the socio-political forces that provided a context for the arts. “A lot of [the archival material] has never been seen before, because there haven’t been venues for Latino programming.” That last statement explains why Héctor Galán is the perfect executive producer for such a project.

  With over 30 years experience in television and film (20 of those as an independent documentary producer/director/writer), Héctor Galán is uniquely positioned to pull together a complex collection of Visiones. Some of his most recent documentaries include a series of musical celebrations (Accordion Dreams; Songs of the Homeland; and I Love My Freedom, I Love My Texas: On the Road with Mingo Saldivar Y Los Cuatro Espadas), a study of border life in the economically deprived colonias of South Texas (Forgotten Americans), and a socio-political history of the Chicano civil rights movement (Chicano!). Starting in the early 70s, this native San Angelino worked his way through a generally Anglo-dominated television production system before landing a job in Boston at WGBH, where he honed his skills in making politically engaged social statements through the powerful combination of portable video and PBS (Frontline). Even with the satisfaction of having a nation-wide public forum through working for the most powerful station within PBS, Galán’s dream was ultimately to be an independent producer. With that in mind, he returned to Texas in the 1980s and set out to realize his intentions. His numerous documentaries and awards attest to his success during the past 20 years.

  Now you will have the wonderful opportunity to see the results of his most recent labor (four years from thought to finish) in the beautiful setting of the One World Theatre in the Texas Hill Country near Austin. You will also be able to participate in or simply enjoy a Q&A session with Héctor Galán after the screening.
  Chale Nafus, Director of Programming

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  ‘Pocho’ Patchwork

  AFs’s Texas Doc Tour brings the formidable Héctor Galán and his “Visiones’ to One World Theatre

  Come on out to the One World Theatre for a sneak peek at Héctor Galán’s next epic project — Visiones — a terrific odyssey through the patchwork quilt of Latino culture in the U.S. of A. Galán has been dubbed the “Hispanic Ken Burns” for his many PBS-broadcast films on wide-ranging issues involving the country’s Latino population, including Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement (1996). He’ll screen 10 segments (about 70 minutes) of Visiones, as a work-in-progress that, when completed, will be broadcast as a three-hour PBS special sometime next year.

  Be prepared to fill some gaps in your knowledge of the roots of familiar Latino contributions to the American culture scene, music being one of the more obvious ones. Visiones has segments on the Cuban “Miami Sound” and Lalo Guerrero, one of the fathers, in the Forties, of Chicano music of the Southwest. There’s also a segment on prolific indie filmmaker Willie Varela. Then there are artists in Latino communities from coast-to-coast who are doing things creative, outré or mainstream, that chances are you’re unfamiliar with: Ever heard of Rokafella, the New York hip-hop dancer? Or Evelyn Cisneros, prima ballerina with the San Francisco Ballet? “We’re so narrow in our thinking,” says Galán. “As a Chicano in the Southwest, for instance, I see the world in a particular way — my relationships to Anglos and my place here, but, of course, the Puerto Rican experience in New York or the Cuban exile experience in Miami is totally different.”

  La carpa, meaning “tent,” is a little-known but fascinating form of traveling theatrical entertainment that began in the Twenties and spanned more than 30 years. La Carpa Garcia, profiled in a Visiones segment with interviews from surviving members as well as terrific archival photography, is historically hailed as one of the more popular and long-standing Mexican tent shows from this era. This group traveled and performed in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas, eventually settling in San Antonio. “Carpa was early vaudeville,” explains Galán. “They did circus, comedy, drama, Greek tragedy, and parody — which was probably one of their most important roles, because, for many, they were the source of news of what was going on in the world.”

  The Carpa segment features UT drama department playwright Amparo Garcia-Crow, who is developing a musical production called La Carpa Garcia because she finds carpa an excellent vehicle for filling the vacuum of meaningful Latino acting roles for students, as well as for fleshing out and portraying realistically — warts and all — significant, if less well-known, characters in Latino history. One such historical figure portrayed in Garcia-Crow’s Carpa production is Chicano lawyer Gus Garcia, the first Latino to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, whose stellar career as an advocate was cut short by his alcoholism.

  Then there’s the widely syndicated Latino cartoonist Lalo Lopez Alcaraz. The guy who takes a lot of heat from Latinos because he tells it like it is, pulling no punches. He’s got a Web site called Pocho.com, pocho being the derogatory term that Mexican nationals often fling at Mexican-Americans for leaving their native country. “Alcaraz represents people like me,” laughs Galán, “people who have been criticized for decades as squatters in this country, those who have created their own art, their own language, like Chicanese. To a lot of people, being called a pocho is an insult, but Alcaraz took this idea of pochismo and made it something to be proud of.”

  To assemble Visiones’ vast cultural mosaic, Galán worked closely with the National Association of Latino Art and Culture and then Latino producers all over the country, developing the stories that would make it into the final cut. As executive producer, he then sent out a single production crew of three to each venue, crisscrossing the country in a van to film the segments. “For me, it was a great learning experience to bring this together,” says Galán, “because, while Latinos in this country share a lot — a language and a lot of traditions — there are a lot of differences; we’re not homogenous, even though a lot of people tend to think of ‘Latino’ as a big umbrella.”

  Segments of Visiones: Latino Art and Culture screen as part of the Texas Documentary Tour on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 7pm, at One World Theatre (7701 Bee Caves Rd.). Héctor Galán will conduct a Q&A after the screening. Tickets — $6 for current Austin Film Society members and new members joining before the screening, as well as students; $8 for nonmembers — are available only through One World Theatre (329-6753) by phone or at the venue one hour prior to screening. For more information, check www.austinfilm.org.

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  THE LATINO LENS (08-05-2004)

  The National Association of Latino Independent Producers comes to town, allowing
  Tucsonans to preview a PBS series

  By James Reel

  This weekend, more than two dozen mid-career Latino producers and directors are bringing their projects to town to be critiqued by established professional Latino filmmakers. And that’s not the only reason this is a good time to be a Latino filmmaker, according to the head of the organization that’s sponsoring the event.

  “The market is becoming a bit more accessible and responsive to true independent films, and that’s good for all of us,” says Kathryn Galán, executive director of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP). “Independent voices, small films, intensely personal, provocative and distinguished films can be financed, they can be discovered, and they can be appreciated by audiences.
  There’s also absolutely an interest in Latino subjects and a Latino voice in the culture–you see that with American Family, Raising Victor Vargas, and that’ll be followed up with the release of The Motorcycle Diaries.”

  Austin-based Hector Galán–no relation to Kathryn–has been a producer for 25 years, and he says things are much easier than when he was starting out. “In the early ’80s, it was very difficult for me to try to persuade national production entities to do Latino-themed programming,” he says. “I can remember trying to persuade producers at WGBH in Boston or in New York to look at Latino issues, and it was almost like a perplexing question: Latinos? Hispanics? Who are they?”

  Today, PBS stations like WGBH certainly know who Latinos are, and they know all about Hector Galán, too. His new, six-part series on Latino art and culture in the United States, Visiones, will air on PBS stations across the country (including Tucson’s KUAT-TV) in September and October. You can get an advance look at the series’ first three half-hour episodes at 8 p.m. this Friday, Aug.
  6, at the TCC Leo Rich Theater. There will also be a Q&A session with Galán and other participants, and Latino comedian Joey Medina will open the free show.

  That’s the only part of this NALIP Producers Academy that will be open to the public. The rest of the event is an intensive, invitation-only gathering for mid-career Latino producers working on new projects.

  “This week will further those projects and put the producers in the room with other industry professionals, to help them develop that network of relationships that can help them get that next actor, that piece of funding or that distribution deal to secure their success,” explains Kathryn Galán. The event is expected to involve 35 producers, about as many instructors, 14 actors and eight Tucson-based theater directors who will preside over staged readings.

  Hector Galán says the biggest problem he faces today, as an established producer, isn’t getting funding or distribution, but deciding whether to make documentaries in Spanish targeted specifically at Latinos, or in English for the general market. “I think we can do both,” he says.

  In the six half-hours of Visiones, Galán and his team of independent producers cover the Latino muralist movement of the 1960s, Tejana musician Selena, Santero artisans from New Mexico, Teatro Campesino, the Virgin of Guadalupe as a Latina icon, ballerina Evelyn Cisneros, the Taco Shop Poets of San Diego, Afro-Cuban music of Miami, Tucson-born musician Lalo Guerrero and much more. “You’d be surprised how much you can squeeze into a half hour,” says Galán.

  The series was in production for four years, with separate producers documenting Latino artists all over the country and digging up archival material to put new work into its historical context.

  If the series demonstrates anything, Galán suggests, it’s that Latino culture is incredibly diverse, not something monolithic and unified that supports easy generalizations.

  “And obviously this is an American experience,” he says. “It’s how we come to assimilate, how we bring our own culture into this vast melting pot, but it’s also how we try to stay true to our particular kinds of expression. A lot of it is rooted in movements of social change and artistic expression in the 1960s. Today, a lot of the younger artists borrow from that, but they’re a separate
  generation and not as connected to the old country as we were. Some don’t even speak Spanish. So it’s a whole new mode of expression that’s unique and different from the art you find created in Mexico.”

  Galán says he’s especially looking forward to screening three of the episodes live in Tucson. As a television producer, he almost never has any direct response from an audience. “We tried to stay consistent with our style and not be too avant-garde, but the series has very tight editing, and it’s visually very exciting,” he says. “We pushed it to the limit, and I want people to tell me what they think of it.”

  Sneak preview of Visiones: Latino Art & Culture, featuring comedian Joey Medina
  8 p.m., Friday, Aug. 6
  TCC Le