Sundance: Representation matters, today more than ever

IBC

Two new films screened at Sundance offer powerful takes on Latino American and Chicano culture as minority communities face attack in the U.S.

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First IBC365 goes behind the scenes on autobiographical animation TheyDream then talks to the editor of American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez.

Every film is personal to greater or lesser degree for its principal filmmakers but few dare to open up their family’s love and grief so intimately as William David Caballero.

His feature TheyDream builds on 20 years of documenting his family and makes creative use of animation styles to bring scenes of his late father back to life. 

Lauded for “fully exploring multiple filmmaking techniques blending craft and emotion” and for its “brutal honesty” TheyDream won a Special Jury Award for Creative Expression at Sundance earlier this year.

“I grew up in a trailer in my grandmother’s backyard in rural North Carolina,” Caballero explains. “My family is Puerto Rican, and I was born in New York City, where there’s a much larger Latino presence. Growing up, I always felt a sense of alienation, disconnected from American society, and especially from media.”

While studying fine art and cinema at the Pratt Institute then New York University he made autobiographical feature American Dreams Deferred which set the tone for a singular visual language rooted in tactile set-building and intergenerational storytelling.

“I didn’t see many authentic representations of people of colour, or at least ones portrayed in a positive light. I realised that I wasn’t seeing stories that reflected people like me, and I felt that I could be a missing link — a role model for a quirky, diverse younger generation of filmmakers.”

That feeling really crystallised in college, when a professor told Caballero that no one would ever be interested in a documentary about his family. “In a way, that was the final ‘no; I was going to accept. I decided to take matters into my own hands.”

In the 15 years since Caballero has been telling stories about his family and about myself. “For me, it was a way to stay creative when I went home. I’m someone who always needs to be working on a project. My first feature was almost like a student project about my family, very cinéma vérité. I was holding the camera and recording constantly.”

In 2015 he created Gran'Pa Knows Best using 3D-printed miniature recreations of his grandfather and “hilarious, hysterical voicemail messages” from his grandfather that his nephew had saved. It ran for two seasons on HBO.

“That was when I realised: I should just keep recording and capturing these moments. Sometimes I’d have deeper conversations with my parents about their lives; other times I’d just collect quirky, mundane audio and transform it into something magical.”

The short Victor & Isolina, documented his grandparents’ separation through recorded dialogue and screened at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and at the Museum of Modern Art (Documentary Fortnight). A follow-up short Chilly and Milly, explored the impact of his father’s kidney failure on his parents.

TheyDream which he began in 2020 builds on this work and gave him more time to tell a story that unfolds over different periods in his family history.

A Creative Capital award of $50,000 in 2021 enabled him to start production. “Originally, I wanted everything to be 3D printed (all the figures as physical objects) but the cost of modelling, printing, and painting just wasn’t feasible yet. Instead, I hired animators with very specific styles and gave them a lot of creative freedom, while I still storyboarded everything.”

The film’s animation styles ranges from 2D cartoon to graphic-novel–style illustrations, 3D felt animation, and rotoscoping.  The one consistent element throughout is miniature.

“We created miniature sets for the characters to inhabit, and that became a central visual theme,” he says. “I wanted to combine 3D and 2D with more tactile miniature filmmaking, because I think the miniature work makes people pick up the couch or pick up the characters. It makes the characters feel alive.”

In the early stages, when he didn't have the money to hire a miniaturist, he AI-generated dollhouse backgrounds.  Once they received more funding from public media like ITVS and Latino Public Broadcasting Cabellero he removed them all.

“Instead, I showed the backgrounds to my miniaturist as references and said, ‘I want this made real, and I want it to look even better.’ I also continued to use AI in other ways such as summarising notes, so I could focus more on creativity. But the heart of the film really comes from a wide range of human collaborators.

Many of the animators were Puerto Rican or Latino, he says. “Some were queer, and more than half were women or female-identifying. Each animator brought something brilliant and personal to their scenes.”

He used Adobe tools almost exclusively: Photoshop for image creation, After Effects throughout the project, and Premiere for editing.  3D animators used Blender and Unreal. EbSynth was used for rotoscoping.

“I was the main compositor, though a couple of people helped with specific scenes. I was also the sole editor until the very end, when I brought in an assistant editor to help clean things up.

“Near the end of the process, I used Adobe’s AI features to generate a few extra seconds of footage when animations ended too abruptly. It was very minimal, maybe three times total, but those extra two seconds of padding really helped smooth things out.

“I tend to approach projects with a kind of ‘rule of thirds.’ One third of the work uses techniques I already know well. Another third involves things that are more challenging but achievable with the right collaborators. And the final third is stuff I have no idea how to do — things that scare me in a good way, because I know I’ll learn from them. And because this film is very meta and self-referential, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It also captures the creative process itself.”

Caballero’s mother Milly appears in the film through rotoscoped performances despite having no prior filmmaking experience.

“There’s a moment in the film where I ask her if she wants to help rotoscope animations based on my grandmother’s voicemails. I genuinely didn’t know how she’d react. I was prepared for her to say ‘no’, and to document that, because in documentaries you never know what will happen next. But she completely embraced it. She embodied my grandmother perfectly, even though she’d never acted before.”

Beyond that, we see them in the film working together on other crafts and homages. “Her involvement wasn’t about learning technical skills,” says Caballero. “It was about transformation — turning someone from a passive consumer of media into a creator. It became a way for her to process grief, move beyond it, and heal. Ultimately, that’s what I hope the film does for viewers as well.”

Art is a powerful form of resistance

While TheyDream offers a personal account of Latino American heritage, Mexican American culture is celebrated in a new documentary chronicling the life and career of Chicano playwright and film director Luis Valdez.

His name may be unfamiliar but American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez argues that his artistic reputation has been buried over the years by a prejudicial media. 

“Even in the United States he’s not as well-known as he should be,” says editor Daniel Chávez Ontiveros. “One of the main reasons we made this film was to highlight how important he is as the godfather of Chicano theatre and Chicano filmmaking.”

Valdez is perhaps best known for directing 1987 musical biopic La Bamba starring Lou Diamond Phillips which remains the most successful Latino movie of all time.

Yet aside from a TV movie a decade later, Valdez never directed in Hollywood again.
“It wasn’t that he lacked the drive. He continued writing scripts and directing theatre. It wasn’t a lack of vision or ambition. It was a lack of access,” says Chávez.

“The doors in Hollywood weren’t open for filmmakers of colour in the same way at that time — and to some extent, that’s still true today. It’s sad, because he could have told so many more Mexican-American stories on a larger scale.”

Director David Alvarado is Mexican-American and Mexico City born Chávez has lived in the U.S for a decade and became a U.S. citizen a couple of years ago. He says he hasn’t experienced discrimination directly, but feels the fear that can come with being a minority in another country.

“My five-year-old son was born here. One of my biggest motivations for working on this film was not wanting my son to grow up feeling like a second-class citizen. We are here. We’ve been here for centuries. We deserve to be valued and respected.”

The production drew on over 200 hours of archival footage including 80,000 feet of Valdez’ work sitting undeveloped in film cans. Without the financial support of the University of California in developing and scanning much of that history could have been lost.

“We structured the film around two threads: the archival material telling the historical story, and contemporary interviews with Luis, his friends, and his family reflecting on it.”

Director Taylor Hackford who produced La Bamba and actor Lou Diamond Phillips are among those interviewed. The film is narrated by veteran actor Edward James Olmos (Blade Runner) who gained his break thanks to Valdez. 

Chávez cuts all his films in Adobe Premiere and for this project relied on the software’s Productions feature to organise the material into smaller sub-projects.

“When you’re dealing with huge amounts of media, rendering and saving can take time — and when you’re on deadline, minutes matter. I was in the Bay Area, David was in Brooklyn, and our assistant editor, Claudia Ramírez, was in Los Angeles. Using Productions, we could work remotely and see each other’s changes almost instantly. It allowed for a very collaborative and creative process.”

Chávez himself met Valdez, now 85, on several occasions during the interview process, a rough cut screening and at the Sundance premiere. A former union activist, Valdez greatest legacy is likely the founding of El Teatro Campesino in the mid-1960s in California producing protest plays in support of local farmers.

“What Luis often said during our Q&As is that art is a powerful form of resistance,” Chávez says. “That art builds bridges and breaks walls. That’s especially important at a time when arts funding is being reduced and some organisations are being shut down. This film aims to speak not only to Mexican-American communities but also to people who may not know that experience. Whether someone is Mexican-American, born here, or an immigrant who recently arrived, representation matters.”