Puerto Rican Voices (Season 6) - Placements and Displacements Open Call

Overview

The Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) will award five producers $15,000 each to participate in CENTRO Social Documentary Lab. Each will produce one of five episodes for the next season of the TV show Puerto Rican Voices. Puerto Rican Voices is an investigative documentary TV series produced by CENTRO, which focuses on stories that highlight the social issues of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora and their connection to the archipelago. The series airs on CUNY-TV and then gets published on our YouTube channel. For this new season, we are focusing our series on stories of placement and displacement of the Puerto Rican diaspora; with a focus on well-known diasporic communities, recently established diasporic communities, and  returning migrants to Puerto Rico. 

Benefits: None

Schedule: Flexible

Location: Regional Field 

What We Are Looking For

The Season 6 of Puerto Rican Voices is looking for pitches that center stories of Puerto Rican and diasporican placement, displacement, and migration in communities across the US and return migration to Puerto Rico. Examples include:

• Histories and new issues in historic diasporic communities 
• Stories and community efforts in lesser known diasporic communities 
• Formation of new diasporic communities across and beyond the United States
• Gentrification, dispossession, and environmental battles in diasporic communities
• Rematriation and Return Migration to Puerto Rico 
• Sexiles and LGBTQIA political, social, and economic displacement
• Mutual aid efforts, communal practices, support systems, and solidarity projects in the diaspora 
• Creative individual or collective practices that bolster cultural preservation and transformation
• Historical preservation, archive development, or public memorialization projects
• Local and diasporic foodways, food justice, and food geographies in the context of shared and co-constituted communities  
• Stories about place, land, bodies, and race
• Internal displacements, new migrations, and cultural exclusion or erasure in Puerto Rico

Potential projects must include the following five-pillars:

1. Story: The episode must have a clear narrative arc with a well defined investigative angle. We are looking for compelling stories that drive the subject or theme of the documentary episode, and are connected to the season at large. The final product should be accessible to a general audience. 
2. Unique perspective or angle: The stories must have a unique perspective or angle about the theme or topic being proposed. Show us how you are bringing an original perspective and research as a filmmaker. The pitch should ask or propose questions that have not been asked and decenter traditional approaches. 
3. Historical Context: The project must look at the larger historical context of the featured community, including but not limited to: issues of colonialism, labor, migration, geography, gender, housing, education, etc. How are you framing this complex story/history for the non-expert viewer? 
4. Interconnections: Projects must be developed through a critical lens that considers the interconnections present in the communities or participants to be centered; should show agency, foreground undertold stories, and complicate the ways we think about certain issues, groups, individuals, or communities. 
5. Representational ethics: The proposed project and creative team must demonstrate understanding of the lived experiences of the participants and communities; prioritizing first-hand knowledge and exercising curiosity to explore new dimensions of the issues presented in a non-extractive way.

Duties & Responsibilities of Selected Producers:

General 

• Propose and execute an episode following the Season 6 PRV guidelines
• Select their team members for their episode (DOP, Sound person, etc)
• Manage episode budget on the field
• Communicate and report progress with the Series Producer/Showrunner 
• Collect likeness and location releases and coordinate film permissions
• Follow Puerto Rican Voices Series workflows on Asana (our project management tool) 

Pre-Production

• Participate with a cohort of filmmakers as part of Centro’s Social Documentary Lab
• Attend workshops provided by Centro to learn about our Archives, Data Team and other resources at Centro
• Work with the series producer to develop a production plan for their episode
• Coordinate interviews, and b-roll shots 

Production, Post-Production 

• Direct the shooting in the field and conduct interviews
• Gather clearances, behind the scenes photographs, and video files
• Media manage and DIT to ensure proper backup of files and delivery of footage to Centro for editing 
• Review footage with editors
• Share the list for locators, lower-thirds, credit of their episode with Series Producer
• Participate in cohort meetings to watch the episodes and enact feedback
• Enact notes and deliver along with editors the video cuts delivered by filmmakers: rough cut, fine cut, final cut
• Work with the series producers to finalize and package all materials ready for distribution
• Participate in the promotional efforts and public presentations of the Series

Services covered by CENTRO

As Series Producer, CENTRO will cover the following services:

• Fact-checking
• Editing
• Audio VO recording pending project needs. 
• Writing support
• Translation
• Graphics
• Basic color/ Sound mix
• Mastering

Eligibility

• Open to all but applicants must demonstrate a close relationship to Puerto Rico or the Puerto Rican diaspora and its histories
• Applicants must have directed or produced at least one 20+ minute documentary short-film
• Project and budget proposal and must demonstrate the producer's ability to deliver the episode

AI USAGE CLAUSE

As you write your proposal, we ask that you do not use AI tools to write your narrative. While AI can be useful, we want to hear your voice: your experience and vision. Help our selection committee understand not just what you do, but also why and the impact you think you can make. CENTRO is not looking for perfect proposals but genuine ones instead.

Award Amount: $15,000

Deadline: June 1, 2025 at 11:59 pm.

Submissions must be received on or before the provided deadline. 

Decision Announced: Winners will be notified by end of July 2025

Fellowship Begins: Fall 2025

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About Rooted + Relational

Rooted + Relational is a five-year research initiative at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) funded by the Mellon Foundation. It seeks to reimagine the research agenda and scholarly and community impact of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) in the United States and beyond. This initiative aims to make CENTRO a public-facing, horizontal, decolonial feminist institute that opens new paths in academia and expands community-driven research beyond the walls of the academy. By strategically linking the CENTRO’s research agenda, data hub projects, media, arts, and culture output, scholarly mentoring initiatives, and community partnerships, it addresses pressing social, political, and economic issues facing Puerto Rico and the Diaspora. The goal is to create a unifying higher learning community at CENTRO that tends to the intellectual and cultural needs of our committed and diverse public.  

About the Center for Puerto Rican Studies

The Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) at Hunter College, City University of New York, is a research institute dedicated to the study and interpretation of the Puerto Rican experience in the United States by producing and disseminating relevant interdisciplinary research and collecting, preserving, and providing access to archive and library resources that document their history and culture. CENTRO seeks to link scholarship with social action and political debates, and contribute to the enrichment of Puerto Rican studies.  

CENTRO is dedicated to the comprehensive collection of data, graphic arts, and library and archival resources that document the history and legacy of Puerto Ricans in the United States, to the study of critical and relevant social issues and conditions affecting this culturally diverse nation, for the purpose of promoting effective community and public sector interventions, and supporting the intellectual and educational advancement of young scholars.  

CENTRO's Puerto Rican Diaspora Archives contain more than 5,000 cubic feet of materials and include documents from artists, writers, politicians, activists, and other prominent community figures and organizations. The archives document the diversity of individuals and communities that reside in the city and have sought to focus their efforts on historically Puerto Rican enclaves such as the Lower East Side (Loisaida), East Harlem (El Barrio), the South Bronx, and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In addition, it houses the records of the Offices of the Government of Puerto Rico in the United States, which record the migration and working conditions of Puerto Ricans from the early 1930s until the closing of their offices in the mid-1990s, and document the formation of Puerto Rican communities in neighborhoods throughout the Northeast, Chicago, and Florida, with a special concentration in New York City.

About Hunter College

Located in the heart of Manhattan, Hunter is the largest college in the City University of New York (CUNY) system. Founded in 1870, it is also one of the oldest public colleges in the country and famous for a student body that is as diverse as the city itself. Most Hunter students are the first in their families to attend college and many go on to top professional and graduate programs, winning Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships, Mellon fellowships, National Institutes of Health grants, and other competitive honors. More than 23,000 students currently attend Hunter, pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in more than 170 areas of study. The 1,700 full- and part-time members of Hunter’s faculty are unparalleled. They receive prestigious national grants, contribute to the world's leading academic journals, and play major roles in cutting-edge research. They are fighting cancer, formulating public policy, expanding our culture, enhancing technology, and more.