Oscar "Zeta" Acosta Fierro was a Mexican-American attorney, politician, novelist and activist in the Chicano Movement. He was most well known for his novels Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972) and The Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973), and for his friendship with American author Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson characterized him as a heavyweight Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, in his novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Acosta disappeared in 1974 during a trip in Mexico and is presumed dead.
Ruben Salazar was a civil rights activist and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, the first Mexican-American journalist from mainstream media to cover the Chicano community.
Lourdes Portillo is a Mexican film director, focusing on Latin America and Latin American-born immigrants in the United States.
Luis Javier Rodriguez is a poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and columnist. He was the 2014 Los Angeles Poet Laureate. Rodriguez is recognized as a major figure in contemporary Chicano literature. He identified himself as a native Xicanx writer in his most recent book. His best-known work, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., received the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, among others. It has been the subject of controversy when it was included in school reading lists in California, Illinois, Michigan, and Texas, due to its frank depictions of gang life.
Rafael Suarez, Jr., known as Ray Suarez, is an American broadcast journalist and the current John J. McCloy Visiting Professor of American Studies at Amherst College. Most recently, Suarez was the host of Inside Story on Al Jazeera America Story, a daily news program on Al Jazeera America, until that network ceased operation in 2016. Suarez joined the PBS NewsHour in 1999 and was a senior correspondent for the evening news program on the PBS television network until 2013. He is also host of the international news and analysis public radio program America Abroad from Public Radio International. He was the host of the National Public Radio program Talk of the Nation from 1993-1999. In his more than 30-year career in the news business, he has also worked as a radio reporter in London and Rome, as a Los Angeles correspondent for CNN, and as a reporter for the NBC-owned station WMAQ-TV in Chicago. He is currently one of the US correspondents for Euronews.
Kamala Lopez is an American filmmaker, actress, writer, director, and political activist. She has had starring roles in Black Jesus, Medium, 24, Alias, NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, and 21 Jump Street. She has been a featured actress in films including Born in East L.A., Deep Cover, The Burning Season, Clear and Present Danger, Lightning Jack, and I Heart Huckabees.
Manuel Ocampo is a Filipino artist. His work fuses sacred Baroque religious iconography with secular political narrative. His works draw upon a wide range of art historical references, contain cartoonish elements, and draw inspiration from punk subculture.
Arthur Dong is an American filmmaker and author whose work centers on Asia America and anti-gay prejudice. He received a BA from San Francisco State University and a Directing Fellow Certificate at the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies. In 2007, SFSU named Dong its Alumnus of the year “for his continued success in the challenging arena of independent documentary filmmaking and his longstanding commitment to social justice."
Renee Tajima-Peña is an American filmmaker whose work focuses on immigrant communities, race, gender and social justice. Her directing and producing credits include the documentaries Who Killed Vincent Chin?, No Más Bebés, My America...or Honk if You Love Buddha, Calavera Highway, Skate Manzanar, Labor Women and the 5-part docuseries Asian Americans.
Chilean cinema refers to all films produced in Chile or made by Chileans. It had its origins at the start of the 20th century with the first Chilean film screening in 1902 and the first Chilean feature film appearing in 1910. The oldest surviving feature is El Húsar de la Muerte (1925), and the last silent film was Patrullas de Avanzada (1931). The Chilean film industry struggled in the late 1940s and in the 1950s, despite some box-office successes such as El Diamante de Maharajá. The 1960s saw the development of the "New Chilean Cinema", with films like Three Sad Tigers (1968), Jackal of Nahueltoro (1969) and Valparaíso mi amor (1969). After the 1973 military coup, film production was low, with many filmmakers working in exile. It increased after the end of the Pinochet regime in 1989, with occasional critical and/or popular successes such as Johnny cien pesos (1993), Historias de Fútbol (1997) and Gringuito (1998).
Jed Riffe is an American filmmaker and founder of Jed Riffe Films + Electronic Media. For over 30 years his documentary films have focused on social issues and politics including: Native American histories and struggles and agriculture, food and sustainability issues. He lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.
La Mission is a 2009 drama film starring Benjamin Bratt and Jeremy Ray Valdez. It is written and directed by Peter Bratt. The film has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival and the Palm Springs International Film Festival.
Sebastian Award is a prize delivered in September, since 2000, to a film or documentary screened during San Sebastián International Film Festival that best reflects the values and reality of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.
Precious Knowledge is a 2011 educational and political documentary that centers on the banning of the Mexican-American Studies (MAS) Program in the Tucson Unified School District of Arizona. The documentary was directed by Ari Luis Palos and produced by Eren Isabel McGinnis, the founders of Dos Vatos Productions.
Hannah Weyer is an American filmmaker and writer living in New York, who has written, directed and produced narrative and documentary films. Her films have screened at the Human Rights Watch, Sundance and the New York Film Festivals and won recognitions, including awards from LoCarno, Sundance, Doubletake Documentary and South by Southwest Film Festivals. Her documentaries, La Boda and La Escuela aired on PBS as part of the POV-American Documentary series. Screenwriting credits include work that premiered on HBO, including Life Support (2007), directed by Nelson George, and which earned a Golden Globe award for its lead actress, Queen Latifah. Other writing credits include a novel set in Far Rockaway, Queens entitled, On The Come Up, which was published by Nan Talese/Knopf in 2013. It received a 2013 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers award and Weyer was a NAACP Image Award Nominee for Debut Author. Most recently, her short story, Sanctuary City, won the 2018 Danahy Fiction Prize and will be published in the Tampa Review's Fall/Winter 2018 issue.
Breach in the Silence is a 2012 Venezuelan drama film directed by Luis Rodríguez and Andrés Rodríguez. The film was selected as the Venezuelan entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated.
Latinos '08 is a PBS documentary that examines the political influence of Latinos through the lens of the 2008 presidential election. Since 2008, shifting demographics in the United States are reshaping elections, changing the political landscape, and impacting policy at the federal, state, and local levels. Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups are challenging the ways in which politicians, academics and other cultural influencers consider and discuss race by upending this country's black/white racial binary paradigm.
Sands of Silence: Waves of Courage is a 2016 documentary film that addresses the spectrum of sexual violence, from child sexual abuse and clergy abuse to rape and sex trafficking. It was directed, written and produced by filmmaker Chelo Alvarez-Stehle.
Caupolicán Ylich Ovalles Sequera,, is a Venezuelan film director, producer and screenwriter. He was president of the Venezuelan Chamber of Feature Film Producers, being a member of the Board of Directors of the Premios Platino del Cine Iberoamericano, and Venezuela’s representative before the Ibero-American Federation of Film and Audiovisual Producers, between the years 2013 - 2018.
Ernesto Daranas Serrano is a Cuban filmmaker known for Fallen Gods (2008), Behavior (2014), and Sergio & Sergei (2017). He is arguably Cuba's most popular and critically acclaimed filmmaker of the 21st century.
