\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Critics Choice Association held its 5th annual Celebration of Latino Cinema & Television in L.A. on Friday, coming at a particularly fraught time for a community that is being specifically targeted by the Trump administration. <\/p>\n
\n\tThat was the subject of several of the luncheon\u2019s acceptance speeches, as America Ferrera, Andy Garcia, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Ramos, Camila Perez, Dolores Huerta, Frida Perez, Gabriel Luna, Kleber Mendon\u00e7a Filho, Dolores Fonzi and Tonatiuh were all recognized for their work. <\/p>\n
\n\tFerrera \u2014 presented her Trailblazer Award by The Lost Bus <\/em>producer Jamie Lee Curtis \u2014 had a standout moment as she closed out the event by noting how \u201cin a day and age where discourse and conversation are failing to create connection and empathy and understanding, the storytelling we do becomes more vital,\u201d as TV and film \u201chas the power to transport people outside of their entrenched logic and into their hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe star, who is also heavily involved in political activism, later explained how she was recently talking to a scholar on the history of authoritarianism who said the U.S. is \u201cbarreling towards a crisis point in our country and therefore in our world. And we [in Hollywood] are not a cute little side note to civil society \u2014 we are civil society. Artists and the stories we tell have a role to play in this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe have an obligation to point not only to what we are against, but to create and to demonstrate the world that we are for and the world that we want to live in; and to not depict one another as charity cases, as people who need us to have dignity. We are born with our dignity, and no one will take that away from us,\u201d Ferrera passionately continued. \u201cOur opportunity as storytellers is to lift each other up, to give each other our humanity, to reaffirm the dignity that we all deserve \u2014 and in this moment, we have an obligation to preserve our rights as storytellers, as artists. And make no mistake, we are there, and it is time for us to find our courage, find our heroism, be as brave as the characters we write and as brave as the characters we play and stand up and use our voices and use our art \u2014 make art that inspires and calls forth the world we want to live in.\u201d <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tCristo Fern\u00e1ndez, Anthony Ramos, America Ferrera and Tonatiuh <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAlberto E. Rodriguez\/Getty Images for Critics Choice Association<\/p>\n \n\tThat call to action was present from the early moments of the event, which began with giving activist Huerta the Icon Award. She celebrated the entertainment community for creating \u201cstories that are going to let the world know we are not criminals,\u201d but rather \u201cthe people that really feed and really nourish this nation, the United States of America. And the other thing that we have to say \u2014 the majority of the people right now that are being harassed and tormented, they\u2019re not immigrants, they\u2019re the indigenous people of the continent.\u201d To finish her speech, she led the room in a chant of her signature rallying cry\u00a0\u201cs\u00ed se puede.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tThroughout the event, Garcia was presented with the Vanguard Award, The Secret Agent<\/em> filmmaker Filho with the Director Award, The Studio\u2019<\/em>s Frida Perez with the Showrunner Award (accompanied by a speech from Seth Rogen) and Ramos with the Supporting Actor, Film Award for A House of Dynamite<\/em>. Isaac virtually accepted the Actor, Film Award for Frankenstein<\/em> while Luna was presented the Supporting Actor, Film Award for Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy<\/em>, Dolores Fonzi\u00a0with the International Film Award, Camila Perez with the Breakthrough Actress Award and Kiss of the Spider Woman<\/em>\u2018s Tonatiuh with the Breakthrough Actor Award. <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tFrida Perez and Seth Rogen <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAlberto E. Rodriguez\/Getty Images for Critics Choice Association<\/p>\n \n\tIn his speech, Tonatiuh revealed how when the Jennifer Lopez musical came out two weeks ago, they gave away tickets across the country to people in financial hardship \u2014 including kids at the high school he had gone to, who he brought to a screening at The Grove. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThey got to see themselves on screen, and I held them in my arms as they cried and they said that they have never seen anything like this,\u201d Tonatiuh said. \u201cSome of them came out to me, some of them told me that they were carrying their passports in their pockets just in case, and that this film helped them process their pain.\u201d He concluded with echoing Huerta\u2019s call of \u201cs\u00ed se puede\u201d and adding, \u201cFuck ICE.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Critics Choice Association held its 5th annual Celebration of Latino Cinema & Television in L.A. on Friday, coming at a particularly fraught time for a community that is being specifically targeted by the Trump administration. That was the subject of several of the luncheon\u2019s acceptance speeches, as America Ferrera, Andy Garcia, Oscar Isaac, Anthony<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[574,680,7510,17870,659,830,90,1913],"class_list":{"0":"post-30482","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-calls","10":"tag-courage","11":"tag-ferrera","12":"tag-find","13":"tag-hollywood","14":"tag-moment","15":"tag-political"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}