Lourdes Portillo

Lourdes Portillo is a Mexican film director, producer, and writer. 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. 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. Her films have been widely studied and analyzed, particularly by scholars in the field of Chicano studies.