Lourdes Portillo (born 1944) is an 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.[1]
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."[2]
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Portillo was born in Mexico and raised in the United States. She was first exposed to documentary filmmaking while working for a company that made educational films in Los Angeles.[3] She apprenticed with the National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians in San Francisco, and graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1978. Thereafter she began her career as a producer and director.
Portillo's films tend to focus on Latin America and the Latin American experience in the United States. Her film debut, for example, 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 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.
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 films have won numerous awards, mostly from regional film festivals.[4]
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