History
Incorporated as a not for profit in 1983, The Latino Educational Media Center produces and distributes educational media through all viable electronic technology on issues by and about the diverse and complex Latino communities in the United States. The primary focus of its early development will be to document the contributions of Latinos to the life of New York City and as such, Puerto Ricans, the largest and oldest Latino group in New York City is source of much historical material.
Mission
The Mission of the Latino Educational Media Center is to produce and distribute educational media materials in all technology and promote Latino media arts in order to represent the full spectrum and dynamic reality of Latinos in the United States, and to offer Latinos opportunities in media through a wide array of programs.
Programmatic Activity
In this first phase of organizational development, The Latino Educational Media Center (LEMC) will concentrate on documenting the contributions of Puerto Ricans to the life of the city of New York and the nation as a whole. As the largest Latino ethnic group in New York City and other East coast cities, Puerto Ricans, naturalized citizens of the United States since 1917, have a rich unrecognized history of contributions to the development and growth of New York City. In addition to Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans are the most stereotyped Latino group in popular culture. In New York City, many of the achievements of newly arrived Latino groups are predicated on the foundation built by the extensive Puerto Rican community in all the boroughs.
Programmatic activity includes the expansion and interpretation of a collection of individual and group oral histories (video taped) of Puerto Rican leaders in New York during the institution-building period of the 1950’s to the present; the pre production of a long form documentary on the life and work of Dr. Antonia Pantoja within the Puerto Rican community from the 1950’s to the present; a book on the development of Aspira, the premiere educational organization founded by Dr. Pantoja and other Puerto Ricans in New York in 1961, and other educational media materials. In addition to the research, production and distribution of educational and entertaining media products, the Center will engage in appropriate training in media literacy, and creation of an interactive web site with educational information on Puerto Rican and Latino media issues. Expansion of the Oral History collection will occur with a concentration on business, health, education, media, gay and lesbian leadership and radical politics.
Lillian Jiménez,
Executive Director
For nearly 30 years, Lillian Jiménez has worked as a producer, media arts center manager, media activist, exhibitor, funder, and educator.
She has produced “What Could You Do With A Nickel?” awarded an Emmy for editing; Sanctus, a video installation at El Museo del Barrio; The PACT Project video documentary for the Rockefeller Foundation on their Community Transforming work; “SisterSong,” a twenty-minute documentary showcasing the work of a national network of Women of Color working within the reproductive health movement in the United States and Puerto Rico, and is in Post Production on an hour-long documentary on the Puerto Rican community’s struggle for educational and language civil rights, featuring the work of Dr. Antonia Pantoja. She is also developing an audio and video archive of Puerto Rican activists from the 1950’s to the present in conjunction with the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College.
Organizations with whom she has worked include Young Filmmakers Foundation (now known as Film Video Arts); Third World Newsreel: The Foundation for Independent Video and Film; The Film Fund; co-founder of The Paul Robeson Fund for Film, Video and Radio at the Funding Exchange; Media Network, and the National Latino Film and Video Festival of El Museo del Barrio, among others.
As a media literacy pioneer linking media images with issues of power, she created the “Seeing Through AIDS” media literacy workshops and for ten years, worked with a panoply of health organizations, community based organizations, media and access centers. She has offered media literacy workshops on Latino stereotypes, self-representation, color/race and the construction of whiteness. She has taught in the Media Departments of the New School for Social Research and Fordham University.
Under contract to the National Endowment for the Arts, she worked with arts organizations on strategic long term planning and has facilitated hundreds of meetings and retreats. Some of her prior clients include Women Make Movies, Fresh Air Radio in Minneapolis, The Foundation for Independent Video and Film and Urban Bush Women.
A co-founder of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP), she was it’s first recipient of the Life Achievement Award for Activism. She currently serves on the board of the Funding Exchange, a national network of community funds dedicated to supporting social justice.
