The Cervantes Institute of Los Angeles names filmmaker and actor Gerald Fillmore as its first resident artist

The Cervantes Institute of Los Angeles (ICLA) has named the Spanish-British filmmaker, screenwriter and actor Gerald Fillmore as its first resident artist (artist-in-residence), as the institution has announced.

This initiative consists of developing joint projects with the ICLA for the Los Angeles and international communities in order to strengthen the links between cultural creation in Spanish, specific audience segments of cinema and the audiovisual industry in the United States.

This appointment inaugurates a new line of programming from the Cervantes Institute aimed at promoting dialogue between Spanish-language cinema and the cultural ecosystem of the west coast of the United States. Born in Zaragoza and living in Los Angeles, Fillmore is known for his work on the Netflix series ‘Muertos SL’ and for his career as a bilingual creator between Europe and the United States.

The announcement was made within the framework of a special screening of his film ‘Face Love’, written, directed and starring Fillmore himself. The film, co-starring Tito Valverde, is a romantic comedy built through fake video calls between Los Angeles, Madrid, London and Tijuana.

This project has been conceived as a double bilingual production, with two independent versions shot in parallel: one in English (‘Face Love’) and another in Spanish (‘Amor en todo la cara’). The Spanish version has already been screened in Spain, where it has been awarded at various festivals, while the English version had its world premiere this March 22 at the 33rd San Diego Latin Film Festival.

The cast brings together interpreters from Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Peru, the United States, Equatorial Guinea, Japan and England, reflecting the contemporary diversity of Spanish as a global language.

This premiere also marks the beginning of a tour of screenings and meetings with students at universities and cultural institutions, in collaboration with the Cervantes Institute of Los Angeles. Among the first stops is the Spanish Language Observatory of the Cervantes Institute at Harvard University, as well as other academic centers in the United States, such as the University of Santa Barbara.

As the Cervantes Institute recalls, the United States is the second country in the world by number of Spanish speakers, especially in California, where about 30% of the population speaks Spanish. Faced with these data, Spanish-language film production within the US industry continues to be less than 3%.

For this reason, the Institute adds, the Fillmore residency seeks to actively contribute to the presence of Spanish within cinema produced in the United States, promoting new bilingual narratives and connecting creative communities on both sides of the Atlantic.