NEW YORK – The recently created Foundation for Audiovisual Narratives in Spanish, or FUNAVE, and the Cervantes Institute in New York will offer screenwriting workshops for film, television and documentaries in Spanish.

The workshops entitled “Funaverano: Escuela de verano de Funave en Nueva York” (Funaverano: Funave Summer School in New York) will run from July 2 through Aug. 10 at the Cervantes Institute and will feature the participation of outstanding scriptwriters, professionals and scholars of audiovisual narratives in Spanish, the new organization said in a press release.

Also, there will be classes and meetings with narrators well-known in the audiovisual area, among them screenwriter Arturo Arango, the head of the Department of Scriptwriting at the International Film and Television School in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, and Javier Corcuera, the director of documentaries such as “La espalda del mundo” and “Invierno en Bagdad.”

The idea for the new organization was thought up more than a year ago by screenwriters and Spanish professors Yolanda Pividal and Angel Luis Lara, who also teaches classes at the New School in New York.

“We noticed that we are part of a new generation of narrators and audiovisual professionals in the United States wanting to learn and undertake new projects without needing to set aside our own language,” Pividal, a professor of film and digital media at the Jacob Burns Film Center in New York and winner of three Emmy Awards, said in the press release.

Lara, who has written scripts for several television series, among them the outstanding “Hospital central,” emphasized that “television content in Spanish is generally associated with stereotyped proposals and formats and (with) low quality.”

However, the scenario is changing. “There is a Latino public that is more and more numerous who would like to enjoy television content in Spanish (that is) complex and with the quality of many of the U.S. series in English,” said Lara, who is also a professor at the International Film and Television School in San Antonio de los Baños.

Pividal and Lara also emphasized that the project that is being launched this summer received support from Jerry Carlson, a professor at City College of New York and film expert, writer Esmeralda Santiago, film director John Sayles and filmmaker Fernanda Rossi.

Also participating in the project is the Culture Department at the Spanish Consulate in New York, among other institutions. EFE