By Nestor Bentancor.

This year’s Sundance Film Festival is getting the warmth of el barrio by showcasing GENTE-FIED, a bilingual web series that explores the life of seven characters in Boyle Heights, an iconic Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles being affected by gentrification.

It was financed by the the multi-platform media company MACRO, and Executive Produced by Charles D. King, Aaliyah Williams and America Ferrera, who also appears in the series.

The seven episodes are directed by Marvin Lemus, who co-wrote them with Linda Yvette Chavez. In a recent exchange with the award-winning Mexican/Guatemalan/American creator, Lemus told us about his experience bringing GENTE-FIED to life.

How was your reaction when you received the news about getting into Sundance?

It took me a few days to process getting in. Our Executive Producer, Aaliyah Williams called me to tell me the good news and I know she was beyond underwhelmed with my reaction. I think she wanted me to cry. I didn’t cry until I called my mom to tell her a few days later. Telling her was when it finally hit me how huge this was for us.

Can you share some examples of going against old Latino stereotypes, both in content and style?

Linda Yvette Chavez and I were adamant about writing three-dimensional Latinxs that pushed back against tired stereotypes. It wasn’t that hard to do because we pulled from our family, friends, and ourselves. Half of our characters are business owners. Two episodes revolve around artists. With that said, we still made it a habit to ask ourselves if we were falling into any traps and sometimes the answer was yes. Stereotypes are so ingrained in us from all the film and TV we’ve watched growing up and we had to make an extra effort to catch them.

I also wanted to fight the stereotype of how Latinxs are always photographed. We’re usually pictured in a very myopic, colorless world because in my opinion, the white gaze views Latinxs through a lens of pity. So my approach started with just picking the opposite of what I always see. I made a couple rules and started from there. No handheld because this isn’t a documentary. No long lens close-ups because I wanted to showcase the world these characters inhabit at all times. No over the shoulders because I wanted each character to pop off the screen and own their frame.

That last thing is color. Mexicans are so damn colorful! We go overboard with color. “Why paint all the walls one color when we can make each wall a different color!” Boyle Heights is full of color and life and capturing that felt important to fighting the tired trend of how Mexicans are always portrayed on screen.

What did you enjoy the most and less about the whole process?

What I enjoyed most was working with my cast of over fifty Latinxs. Each day felt like we were having a carne asada and I was hanging out with my primos, tíos y tías. There was only one day when the entire cast was on set at once and that day made me so emotional to see a set full of brown faces and to see how invested everyone was. It was a really special feeling.
My least favorite was how incredibly little time we had to shoot the whole thing. We shot 70-80 pages in 10 days. Our schedule was insane!

How did you decide the order of the episodes?

The order of the episodes changed at every stage of the process. We figured out an order that made sense in the script phase. After we shot everything, we rearranged it. Then when we picture-locked, we switched it up again. We were lucky that we had a series that we could switch around because they all stand alone. So the order was really based on trying to find a strong start and building a good viewing experience if(when) you binge the episodes. The only episode that never changed was the final episode because the whole series builds to that episode.

What kind of project would you prefer to tackle next?

I would love to make Gente-fied into a TV show and dig even deeper into these stories. A very close second is directing a feature in Guatemala.

The anti-immigrant & diversity rhetoric has gained ground recently. How does that affect you as an artist and content creator?

It makes me work harder. It makes me feel that my work is that much more important because the anti-immigrant rhetoric exists because too many people don’t see immigrants as Gente. They’ve been fed a ridiculous, negative image of immigrants. I want my work to combat that by showcasing Latinxs of all walks of life so it’s easier to see us as people and not the boogey monster.