From: NY Times

SOON after Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, was stabbed to death in Patchogue last year, James Garcia Sotomayor, a filmmaker who lives in nearby Brentwood, got a worried phone call from his mother, who lives in his native Ecuador. The call, he said, inspired him to make a movie based on the Patchogue event.

Mr. Garcia Sotomayor poured his life savings — $40,000 he had intended to use to buy a home — into “Taught to Hate,” a 27-minute fictional film. It includes a confrontation between a group of non-Latino teenagers and two Latino immigrants, much like the real-life incident for which seven youths are awaiting trial.

“These are personal issues,” Mr. Garcia Sotomayor said. “They are so important to me.”

After he cast Brandon Hannan, a 16-year-old from Dix Hills who played Vito Spatafore Jr. in “The Sopranos,” 700 actors applied to audition, he said.

“Taught to Hate” will be among 25 films featured next weekend at the fifth annual Long Island Latino International Film Festival at the Charles B. Wang Center at Stony Brook University. Besides the United States, they come from countries including Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.

The festival was founded by T. J. Collins of Hicksville and Janet Cruz of Holbrook, who share the title of executive director.

Mr. Collins, who owns a film production company, has included his first feature, “Willets Point,” which he wrote, directed and produced. “It’s the story of a family struggling to make ends meet,” he said. “My mother and father worked very hard. They had their own cleaning company.” His protagonist, Guillo Blanco (Alfredo Suarez), is an auto mechanic in the Queens industrial enclave the film takes its title from.

Mr. Collins said he expanded the film after visiting the New Jersey home of his cinematographer and co-producer, Ivan Velez, where he met Mr. Velez’s father-in-law — who turned out to be Moses Caban, Mr. Collins’s former mechanics teacher at East Meadow High School. Not only did Mr. Collins cast Mr. Caban in the film, he said, but he also incorporated his story. Mr. Caban’s wife, Diane Victoria Caban, has Huntington’s disease, an incurable degenerative disorder. In the film, Guillo’s wife, Doris (Lorraine Rodriguez, who also appears in “Taught to Hate”), learns she has the disease.

For Frances Lozada, an actress and writer who lives in Bayside, Queens, the frustrations of auditioning inspired her documentary “StereoTYPEd.” Ms. Lozada said casting directors often found her looks either too Latina or not Latina enough. “I can’t win,” she said. She wrote and directed the 24-minute film, and her husband, the actor Franky G, whose credits include “The Italian Job” and “Wonderland,” was executive producer. He, Ms. Lozada and other actors talk onscreen about stereotyping. “I want to send the message that we’re all the same,” Ms. Lozada said.

In “Evergreen,” shot mostly in Mineola, Rolando Sanchez, the writer and director, tells a fictional story of spousal abuse in just 20 minutes, including flashbacks to the abusing husband’s abysmal childhood. Mr. Sanchez, an electrical engineer who lives in Forest Hills, Queens, said he became fascinated with film in 1996 as he watched “Saving Private Ryan” while serving with the Navy in the Persian Gulf. He said his film has universal appeal.

“I don’t make movies for Latinos,” he said. “I make films with Latinos in them.”

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