PBS SoCal and KCET, Southern California’s flagship PBS stations as well as the home for award-winning, original local content, announced specially curated programs to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month on both channels.
The shows highlight Hispanic culture as well as the obstacles presented to the Latinx community by today’s societal constraints. Exploring the hardships and triumphs of bi-cultural identity, undocumented citizenship and immigration, the new slate of content looks for a way to educate communities and create positive change.Programming will begin on Wed., Sept. 15 at 8 p.m. on KCET, as well as on Sun., Sept. 19 at 2 p.m. on PBS SoCal and will continue throughout the following four weeks.
PBS SoCal will host several Hispanic Heritage Month specials that include an all-new edition of AMERICAN MASTERS called“Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It” will highlight the beloved icon’s life and illustrious career thus far, followed by a co-presentation from VOCES and AMERICAN MASTERS: “Lights, Camera, Acciòn” whichfeatures the candid perspectives of Latinx actors, writers, producers, directors and showrunners. Additional highlights from PBS include POV: “Fruits of Labor” which features a teenager in a small California agriculturaltownand VOCES “Letters to Eloisa” about Cuban writer José Lezama Lima. New episodes of LA FRONTERA WITH PATI JINICH will explorethe U.S.-Mexico border’s culture, people and cuisine.
Several KCET Original programs will highlight local Latinx issues with Hispanic Heritage content during the month-long celebration. Those options include SOUTHLAND SESSIONS “Mariachi: from Romance to Resistance” which explores the tradition of Mariachi music and its transformation through time and circumstance. While ARTBOUND’s “La Raza” documents East Los Angeles during the late 1960s and 1970s, where a group of young activists used creative tools like writing and photography as a means for community organizing, providing a platform for the Chicano Movement in the form of the bilingual newspaper/magazine La Raza.
To cap off the Heritage Month schedule, PBS SoCal and KCET will exclusively stream THE 36th ANNUAL IMAGEN AWARDSadministered by the Imagen Foundation, an organization dedicated to encouraging and recognizing the positive portrayals of Latinos in the entertainment industry. For more details on how to stream the show, please visit pbssocal.org/hh and kcet.org/hh