- Drafting
- BBC World News
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February 11, 2021
Image source, Sundance Institute
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“The Hispanic community in the United States has barely budged and I’m really upset about that,” says Rita Moreno.
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With an artistic career spanning seven decades in the United States, the prominent actress and singer of Puerto Rican origin Rita Moreno has seen how the presence of Latinos in the entertainment world has changed in that country.
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Unfortunately, she feels that there is not much to celebrate.
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The 89-year-old star, who won an Oscar in 1962 for her role as Anita in “West Side Story,” she says “the Hispanic community in the United States hardly he has advanced” when it comes to their presence on the screens.
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“And since he’s barely advanced, I’m thinking that at my age, I’m not going to see a real change. We cannot let Jennifer Lopez be the only representative of the Hispanic community“he told the BBC.
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Lopez, born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, has for many years had a prominent presence as a Latino representative in the United States.
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Last month he sang on the tInauguration of President Joe Biden, in which he even spoke in Spanish.
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In February 2020, he performed in the halftime show of the Super Bowl in Miami, next to Shakira. And since the 1990s it has Featured in US film, television, and music.
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Image source, Reuters
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Lopez was invited to perform at the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
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While Moreno says he welcomes greater equality and diversity within the American film industry, notes that the Hispanic community is not yet as visible as it should be.
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“They will probably quote my words and flood me with phone calls from people telling me: ‘You don’t like her (López).’ It’s not like that, I love her. It’s bright, it’s wonderful, it’s beautiful and his appearance at the inauguration was moving, but we cannot make her the only representative of who we are“, Explain.
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“I love her, I admire her, I admire her talent and her business skills. She is fantastic, but … it is like saying that any of the great black actors is the representative of that community. It is not enough, we cannot continue interpreting the same role over and over. “
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The Latino stereotype
At 89, Moreno again occupies a place on the screens through the documentary that reviews her life: “Rita Moreno: Just A Girl Who Decided To Go For It”.
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Produced by fellow Puerto Rican Lin-Manuel Miranda, it premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival and examines, among other issues, the sexual assault and stereotypes that Moreno suffered when he first arrived in Hollywood.
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Image source, Loomis Dean/Sundance Institute
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Rita Moreno’s documentary reviews the life of the Puerto Rican interpreter, who worked in film, theater, and television in the United States for seven decades.
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The film explains how a Moreno was asked to do a “foreign” accent when interpreting his lines, no matter what country the characters were from.
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“For so long, the black community, too, has been pushed into a single stereotypical role. And the same goes for the Latino community“, says the director of the film, Mariem Pérez Riera.
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“I mean, I’m from Puerto Rico, I live in the United States, I have an accent, I can speak two languages, and I’m a film director. But there isn’t a role in a movie or on a TV show for someone like me, because you’re not supposed to. I am a Latin woman, “she says.
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“It’s supposed to be the one who crossed the border and cleaned houses and is suffering all time”.
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Rita Moreno, against all odds, managed to make her way into the mecca of cinema, until she became one of the few artists to achieve what is known as the Grand Slam of show business: In addition to an Oscar, he has two Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony.
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In his seven decades of career, Moreno has shared the screen with some of the greats in film history, such as Gene Kelly, Gary Cooper, Anthony Quinn, Yul Brynner, Jack Nicholson or Marlon brando.
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Image source, Sundance Institute
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Moreno’s career path would change when director Robert Wise and choreographer Gerome Robins offered him the role of Anita in the film adaptation of the acclaimed Broadway musical “West Side Story.”
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With the latter she would live a passionate and stormy romance that led her to try to kill herself and that would mark her forever.
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Moreno’s career path would change when director Robert Wise and choreographer Gerome Robins offered him the role of Anita in the film adaptation of the acclaimed Broadway musical. “West Side Story”.
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The film – an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s story of “Romeo and Juliet” set in 1950s New York – became a huge box office success and in 1962 won ten Oscars, including Best Actress. Cast for Rita Moreno.
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