Women Make Movies (WMM), the nation’s largest distributor of films by women and about women, announces that WMM filmmaker Lourdes Portillo will have a retrospective of her films and videos at The Museum of Modern Art from June 22 – 30. The event is one of 40 taking place between now and March 2013 to commemorate WMM’s 40th anniversary.
For over 30 years, Lourdes Portillo’s award-winning films have explored Latin American, Mexican, and Chicano experiences and social-justice issues. She has produced and directed over a dozen works in her signature hybrid style as a visual artist, investigative journalist, and activist. Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and raised in Los Angeles, Portillo studied at the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1970s and 1980s, where she was immersed in Chicano and avant-garde cinema, social-issue documentary film, and feminist and Latin American politics.
AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE, her first film, is a narrative short about the experiences of a young Nicaraguan woman immigrant to the United States. This was followed by LAS MADRES: THE MOTHERS OF THE PLAZA DE MAYO (1985), an Academy Award®–nominated documentary about the courageous Argentinean mothers’ movement that spoke out for that country’s desaparecidos. SENORITA EXTRAVIADA, MISSING YOUNG WOMAN tells the haunting story of the more than 350 kidnapped, raped and murdered young women of Juárez, Mexico. Her films have been widely influential for younger generations of filmmakers, particularly Latina women interested in the expression of their culture.
The Houston Chronicle calls Portillo, “one of the most important filmmakers chronicling the Latino Experience today,” while Variety refers to her work as “powerful…gripping…and passionate.”
In addition to her Academy Award® nomination, her films have also been awarded the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize; International Documentary Association’s Distinguished Documentary Award; The Nestor Almendros Human Rights Prize; San Francisco Film Festival Golden Spire Award; and Films de Femmes, Creteil, Audience Award/Women’s Journalists’ Award.
Lourdes Portillo will be in attendance for the opening four days of the retrospective, including on Friday, June 22, for the New York premiere of AL MAS ALLÁ. She will also participate in a discussion with WMM filmmaker and Sundance award winner Natalia Almada (EL GENERAL, EL VELADOR) on Saturday, June 23.
For more information on the screenings, visit MoMA here.
To see a trailer featuring Lourdes Portillo’s films, click here.
To request an interview with Lourdes Portillo, contact Sarah Jarvis at sarah_jarvis@moma.org.
To request film stills or screeners, contact Abby Peck at apeck@wmm.com.
Organized by Sally Berger, Assistant Curator, Department of Film, on the occasion of the 58th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, in collaboration with Mary Kerr, Executive Director, Flaherty Film Seminar; and Josetxo Cerdán, Artistic Director, Punto de Vista Film Festival, and 2012 Flaherty Film Seminar programmer. Presented in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of Women Make Movies.
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