Name Lourdes Portillo | Role Screenwriter | |
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Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada, Ariel Award for Best Documentary Feature Film Nominations Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Movies Senorita Extraviada, Corpus: A Home Movie Ab, Columbus on Trial, The Devil Never Sleeps, The Mothers of Plaza de Similar People Mark Adler, Todd Boekelheide, Herbert Siguenza, Richard Montoya, Irving Saraf Born 1944 (age 77 years), Mexico | ||
Pov filmmaker interview lourdes portillo 2010
Lourdes Portillo (born 1944) is a Mexican American screenwriter and filmmaker. While the majority of her work is in the documentary film genre, she has also created video installations and written for the stage. Her films have been much studied and analyzed, particularly by scholars in the field of Chicano studies.
Contents
- Pov filmmaker interview lourdes portillo 2010
- Provost lecture lourdes portillo art and poetry in the struggle for human rights
- Biography
- Work
- Awards
- Filmography
- References
She is a member of the production team of Xochitl Productions, which seeks to "inform the general population through varied endeavors that challenge dominant narratives."
Provost lecture lourdes portillo art and poetry in the struggle for human rights
Biography
Portillo was born in Mexico and raised in Los Angeles, California. She was first exposed to documentary filmmaking while working for a company that made educational films in Los Angeles. She apprenticed with the National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians in San Francisco, and graduated with an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1985. Thereafter she began her career as a producer and director.
Work
Portillo's films tend to focus on Latin America and the Latin American experience in the United States. Her film debut, the 1979 Después del Terremoto, focuses on the experience of a Nicaraguan refugee of the 1972 Managua earthquake in San Francisco. It was followed by Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, a 1986 co-production with the Argentine director Susana Blaustein Muñoz which documented the actions of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group of Argentine women who gather weekly at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires to remember their children that were murdered or "disappeared" by the military regime. Las Madres received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for Best Documentary.
Other films have centered on Day of the Dead celebrations, Selena, the Female homicides in Ciudad Juárez, and AIDS.
She has also collaborated with the Chicano comedy troupe Culture Clash on two productions: Columbus on Trial and Culture Clash: Mission Magic Mystery Tour. She has also collaborated with the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
Portillo's work is influenced by radical cinema. Portillo and many artists of radical cinema focus on the combination of art and politics. These artists approach politics in art, but don't want art to suffer for its inclusion--they strive for a balance of the political and the artistic in their expression.
Awards
Portillo's films have won numerous awards, mostly from regional film festivals. Selected awards are listed below.
CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts, 1999 [http://www.anonymouswasawoman.org/2016-award-winners.html
Anonymous Was a Woman], 2016
Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena (1999) Golden Spire, San Francisco International Film Festival, 1999, San Francisco, CA
Devil Never Sleeps (1994)
Mirrors of the Heart (1993)
Columbus on Trial (1992)
Vida (1989)
La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead (1988)
Las Madres: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (1986)