Lourdes Portillo was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and raised in Los Angeles. She is a writer, director, and producer of films from television documentary to satirical video-film collage. Portillo got her first filmmaking experience at the age of twenty-one when a friend in Hollywood asked her to help out on a documentary. Her formal training began several years later. She has thus been making award-winning films about Latin American, Mexican, and Chicano/a experiences and social justice issues both as a director and screenwriter for about forty years. Since her first film in 1979, After the Earthquake/ Despues del Terremoto, she has produced over 12 works that demonstrate her work as not only a director, but also an activist, artist, and journalist. While the majority of her work is in the documentary film genre, she has also created video installations and screen writings. Her films have been widely studied and analyzed, particularly by scholars in the field of Chicano studies. 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."
Personal life
Portillo was born in Mexico and raised in Los Angeles, California. She was first exposed to documentary filmmaking while working for an educational film company 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. Afterward, she began her career as a producer and director of films. The political perspectives of her films have been described as "nuanced" and versed with a point of view balanced by her experience as a lesbian and Chicana woman.
Career
Portillo's films generally focus on Latin America and the experience of Latin American-born immigrants 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 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 included Day of the Dead celebrations, Selena, the Female homicides in Ciudad Juárez, and AIDS. She has completed numerous collaborations such as 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. Portillo’s sixteen completed films include the Academy Award and Emmy Award nominated The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead, Columbus on Trial, The Devil Never Sleeps, Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena, My McQueen, Al Más Allá, and her first animated film, State of Grace. Her celebrated feature-length film, Señorita Extraviada, a documentary about the disappearance and death of young women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, received a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Best Documentary at the Havana International Film Festival, the Nestor Almendros Award at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, and the Ariel, the Mexican Academy of Film Award.
Awards
Portillo and her films have won numerous awards, mostly from regional film festivals. Selected awards:
