Director: Fidel Arizmendi
Writer: Fidel Arizmendi
Producer: Lupe Ontiveres
Cinematographer: Alan Caudillo
Editor: Jesus Silva
Synopsis:
“Hacia la Vida” is a story that brings together two strangers, each looking for their own redemption. Soledad is a lonely woman who works as a professional funeral crier for hire. While on the job, she encounters Salvador, a young man who is there to mourn the death of a woman he never met... his own mother.
Web Site & Trailer: www.hacialavida.com
Biographies:
Fidel Arizmendi has had an illustrious and award-winning career in both advertising and the film and television industry over the past 25 years. Starting out as a television writer, Fidel worked on such distinguished shows as “Family Ties,” “Mission Impossible,” “Tim Conway’s Funny America,” and, ultimately, two of the most successful shows in the history of television, “Home Improvement” and “Roseanne.” He also wrote numerous feature-length screenplays, including award winning screenplay, “Crossover Summer,” a bicultural coming-of-age film about four girls growing up in the 70’s in the border towns of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. In 1996, Fidel joined with filmmakers Sergio Arau and Yareli Arizmendi, to develop, write and produce the first-ever pilot for a Spanish language situation comedy in the US and began to garner recognition within the Hollywood Hispanic community. He later created an original sitcom, “Between Borders,” for celebrated actor and producer Salma Hayek. Around the same time, Fidel recognized an opportunity to educate the mainstream on the nature of the Latino experience in the United States, not through the medium of the silver screen, but through advertising. In 1997, he joined La Agencia de Orcí, one of the country’s leading advertising agencies at the time focused on the growing US Latino Market, and set out to demolish stereotypes by showing Latinos in non-stereotypical ways and persuading clients to broaden their Hispanic messaging from Spanish-only to include English-language commercials on mainstream networks. He created successful, award-winning campaigns for such clients as Honda, Washington Mutual, Allstate, Verizon and Children’s Bureau. Under his watch, Honda became the number one automotive brand sold to Hispanics. For five consecutive years, he was awarded special recognition for his visionary thinking and contributions to the advertising industry. Today, Fidel is considered one of the foremost experts on the growing Latino market. The roster of clients who have sought his unique perspective includes DreamWorks , Viacom , ABC, CBS and NBC. Throughout his advertising career, Fidel kept a toe in the entertainment industry and never lost his desire to accurately portray the Latino experience in the US He joined forces with celebrated and award-winning comedy writer, Rick Najera to develop the television series, “Buford Gomez” for Viacom and later, in collaboration with Salma Hayek, “Who’s Wearing the Pants?” which was set at Los Angeles City Hall, fifty years in the future when the government was 95% Latino and Caucasians were now the minority. Fidel currently runs his own advertainment and consultancy firm, KR8TIVE GUNS. He’s also working on the independent feature project “Film10,” an enterprise aimed at producing 10 feature films in the span of a year. Recently, he partnered with Joel Silver, Mel Gragido and Graham Woodal on “Coil,” a new company with a unique, and fresh approach to advertising.
