There has never been a properly financed or nationally supported effort to establish a Latino film and video archive in this country. The NLCC recognizes the urgent need for such a repository. It is lamentable that most of the body of work produced by Latinos from the 1960s and 1970s that documented the early history and cultural practices of Latinos in the United States has been irretrievably lost or destroyed. Films and videos produced during this era also included seminal works that introduced new narratives to the American Cinema, among other things.
Research by the NLCC has confirmed that hundreds of hours of film produced by Chicano (Mexican American) and Caribbean-based filmmakers have been destroyed. For example, REALIDADES, produced in the early 1970s for public television station WNET in New York, was discarded. REALIDADES was the first national documentary series devoted to examining issues of concern to the Latino community. REFLECCIONES, a collection of 16mm public affairs programs produced for Los Angeles commercial station KABC in the 1970s also had a similar fate. Horror stories such as these abound.
The NLCC has, however, been able to retrieve some important works and materials. They require systematic indexing, but when that process is completed, the materials will be invaluable to historians and researchers. The archive will serve a variety of purposes. Initially, it will identify and bring together the most comprehensive collection of Latino film and video possible. This will include completed films and videos, raw footage, out- takes and related materials - all categories of moving image programs from documentaries to feature films to experimental film and video. The archive will preserve a valuable record of a national community’s history, heritage and culture. Such an archive will make this material available to the public and scholars. Some of this material will be used in programming developed for the Latino Channel for Learning.