- Santiago Pozo is a man with a mission. He is also a man
living his own version of the American dream. When he arrived in LA from
Spain he had a few dollars in his pocket and an idea in his head: to create
a Spanish-language film studio to rival the English-language dominance
of Hollywood. And where better to do it than in Hollywood.
-
- "I started alone with a telephone in my house in
Studio City," he told the Spanish-language paper La OpiniÛn
this week. "Then we moved to Sunset Boulevard, then Hollywood Boulevard,
and now we are in Beverly Hills." Pozo, like many in the film world,
is a man with a sharp understanding of the anthropological niceties of
LA.
-
- This week his company, Arenas Entertainment, releases
a film with the catchy Spanglish title of Nicotina - La Vida Unfiltered.
A huge hit in its native Mexico, the film tries to ride the wave of other
Mexican hits, including Amores Perros and Y tu Mam· Tambien, films
which moved beyond cult success to win mainstream acclaim.
-
- But where those films found international success thanks
to the might of established CHK Hollywood players such as Miramax, Nicotina
is being distributed by the little-known Arenas Entertainment.
-
- "Nicotina represents the first time that a Latin
distributor in the US is releasing a new Mexican film on 120 screens, a
figure that will probably rise to 500," said Pozo. "And that
means that for the first time we're not dependent on an Anglo-Saxon company
accepting or not accepting the film in order to be able to show it in the
US."
-
- "The marketing is pretty much in Spanglish,"
says John Murphy, who works on the film's PR. "It touches on cultural
icons in most Latino homes."
-
- In looking to exploit a market equally at ease in Spanish
and English, the team behind Nicotina echo an innovative strategy quietly
unveiled a month ago by Burger King.
-
- The fast-food chain, something of a leader in tailoring
its message to reach specific ethnic groups, revealed research showing
that many second-generation Latinos were more receptive to adverts aimed
at them in English not Spanish. So its exotically titled department of
diversity and multicultural marketing developed an English-language campaign
aimed at Latinos.
-
- "There are two different groups," says Cirabel
Olson, the department's director. The first he said were still learning
English, but the second "are more acculturated, are usually bilingual,
often second generation, and may or may not be watching Spanish-language
TV. We made a conscious decision to target them."
-
- The message that the Latino community has its own clout
is not lost on politicians: both main presidential candidates are running
Spanish-language ads in the potential swing states of Colorado, Arizona,
New Mexico, Florida and Nevada.
-
- Jorge Ramos notes in his book The Latin Wave - How Hispanics
Will Elect the Next President of the United States, forget Ralph Nader,
it was probably the Cuban-American community in Florida, seduced by George
Bush's lavish spending on Spanish-language TV ads, that won the state for
him in the 2000 election.
-
- For Pozo, the attention, for whatever reason, is more
than welcome.
-
- "It makes me very proud that there is a Latin company
here in the heart of Beverly Hills because there's a racist idea at work
- many people think that we're operating out of a garage in Pacoima [the
fruit-growing area of the San Fernando valley]."
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1287813,00.html
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