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LIMITED SERIES LOURDES PORTILLO: UNA VIDA DE DIRECTORA MAY 12–21, 2023
©Antonio Scarlata
For over four decades, Mexican-born and Los Angeles–raised writer-director-producer Lourdes Portillo has crafted nuanced film and video works that center the emotions and circumstances of diverse Latinx experiences. One of the few Chicana/o filmmakers of the 1970s still working today, Portillo has evolved her craft and expanded her interests to reinvent the form and ethos of activist filmmaking with her exceedingly independent approach to production and storytelling. From her fictional window into the life of a female Nicaraguan refugee to her Oscar-nominated documentary on the mothers of Argentina’s desaparecidos , Portillo’s works defy categorization, slipping easily between docufiction, experimental video, and the melodrama of telenovelas. As scholar Rosa-Linda Fregoso writes, “Portillo’s stylistic signature is [a] defiance of categories and borders,” a truth expressed both formally and through her ongoing commitment to the Spanish-speaking diaspora. To complement Portillo’s vignette in the Significant Movies and Moviemakers gallery of our Stories of Cinema exhibition, this series offers a chance to experience key works from the installation in our theaters. Programmed and notes by K.J. Relth-Miller.
the multigenerational weight of migration, the harsh reality of socioeconomic disparities, and a youthful determination to dream. The film is a wistful and pointed portrait of the subtleties and complexities of navigating one’s cultural identity. DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: Lourdes Portillo, Nina Serrano. WITH: Vilma Coronado, Agnelo Guzman, Leticia Cortez. 1979. 24 min. USA. B&W. English, Spanish. 16mm. Print courtesy of University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Las Madres--The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo An Academy Award–nominee for Best Documentary Feature and winner of a Special Jury Prize, Documentary at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival, Susana Muñoz and Lourdes Portillo’s powerful film follows the courageous Argentine women who refuse to forget the 30,000 innocent desaparecidos who were systematically “disappeared” in the aftermath of the country’s Dirty War. This essential history lesson, which covers both Argentina’s difficult history and sheds light on an empowering resistance movement led by the mothers of the deceased, serves too as a shining example of activist filmmaking, a motivation that runs throughout Portillo’s entire career. DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: Susana Blaustein Muñoz, Lourdes Portillo. WITH: Carmen Zapata (narrator). 1985. 63 min. Argentina. Color. English, Spanish. 16mm.
Las Madres--The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo
After the Earthquake (Después del terremoto) with Las Madres--The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Fri, May 12 | 7:30pm | TMT After the Earthquake (Después del terremoto) Made with co-writer-director and now-established poet Nina Serrano, After the Earthquake is situated within a Latino community of San Francisco. Through the eyes of a young Nicaraguan female refugee, this rich short explores
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