For the past five years, producer Hector Galán has had visions. Images of brilliantly colored murals and intense Nuyorican poetry. Of spicy salsa dancing and foot-tapping Tejano music. As executive producer of the upcoming PBS documentary "Visiones: Latino Art & Culture," Galán examined an array of cultural expressions found in Latino communities across the country - a subject he found had not been thoroughly explored before. "It's an incredible series," said Galán, 50, in a recent phone interview. "It's certainly going to fill a void that's out there. PBS has always been on the forefront to bringing this type of programming to peoples' homes." "Visiones" doesn't air until Sept. 5, but Tucsonans will get a sneak peek tonight at the Tucson Convention Center Leo Rich Theatre. The free screening of the first three half-hour episodes kicks off a week-long conference here for members of NALIP, the National Association of Latino Independent Producers. "It's just amazing to me, the art and the making of art that's happening in Latino communities," Galán said. "We're not dealing with high art. We are dealing with community art and community expression. Some of these people have become pretty well known, but it starts somewhere. It starts in your community." "Visiones" originally came to Galán as a project conceived by the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture in San Antonio. It started off as a smaller project, but Galán - a regular PBS "Frontline" contributor and producer of the highly acclaimed documentary "Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement" - found potential for more. "It began to snowball," he said. "I thought maybe we should expand it and have a more ambitious project." A modest one-hour piece turned into three hours, and a small documentary evolved into a project covering everything from the beat poetry of the San Diego Taco Shop Poets to the performance art of San Francisco's Guillermo Gomez-Peña. "We did a lot of research to begin with, looking at not only the story but the characters and the character-driven segments of who we wanted to feature," he said. "There's so many artists out there that you want to film them all." Covering several aspects of Latino art per episode, Galán brought on a team of producers, many of whom are participants in the NALIP conference, to examine these different aspects across the country. "We decided to do something different," he said. "To make it a lot hipper and go into the community and see what people were doing. We also based a lot of the stories and back-stories in historical settings to find out what is the history of salsa, for instance, or the Cuban sound." Traditional artists like Lalo Guerrero - considered the "King of Latin music" for his range in his songstyle from norteño to mambo - are featured alongside contemporary subjects like hip-hop New York breakers Rokafella and Kwikstep. "Hip-hop is such a vast subject," Galán said. "Rokafella and Kwikstep live in the barrio and have evolved into incredible hip-hop performers. It's their story. It's a day in the life. But we also do a back-story of how hip-hop came to be." Galán - who will host a Q&A session after the screening - felt more challenged with "Visiones" than past works like "Chicano!" "The Chicano series you could call it news and public affairs. It's more journalism," he said. "The difference between that and this is when you are dealing with artistic expression, how do you do justice using the visual medium for some of this extraordinary art? "I think when people see this piece they will not only have an understanding of the artistic expression but they will hopefully have a better understanding of the American Latinos behind it."