Documentary (in development)
Laura Varela, Producer/Director
Anne Lewis, Associate Producer/Editor. Current projects include: Morristown, a working class look at globalization from both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, and ¡Ya Basta! about Texas labor history, and High Stakes which explores the impact of standardized testing on school children in Texas. She is a Film/Video/Multimedia Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation and a senior lecturer in editing and documentary filmmaking at The University of Texas at Austin, and a proud member of Local 6186 CWA-NABET and the Texas State Employees Union.
Catherine Herrera, Associate Producer, is a director and producer with experience in independent filmmaking, news and documentary production and photojournalism — her first love of the visual story. Catherine has worked on projects in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Her creative style is informed by her experience growing up in California and her travels throughout North America. Catherine Herrera started Flor de Miel Productions in 2005 to produce programming for the screen, large and small, as well as work for exhibits in museums, cultural centers and community gatherings. Catherine is Xicana whose tribal affiliation is with the Ohlone Costanoan people.
Nancy Schiesari, Director of Photography, Director of Photography on over 30 documentaries and feature films broadcast for England’s Channel 4, BBC in London, ABC, National Geographic, and PBS, Schiesari has filmed in Europe, the U.S., Africa, India, Pakistan, Iceland, and Latin America. She was recently nominated for a 2002 Television Emmy for outstanding cinematography on The Human Face, producer John Cleese. Among her work as a cinematographer is Barbara Sonneborn’s Academy Award nominated documentary, Regret to Inform and Alice Walker’s Warrior Marks.
Jesse Borrego, Narrator, film credits include the role of Francisco Cindino in CON AIR; the title role in TNT’s TECUMSEH; John Sayles’ LONE STAR; Allison Anders’ MI VIDA LOCA; theanthology film NEW YORK STORIES and the independent feature FOLLOW ME HOME with Benjamin Bratt and Alfre Woodard. He also starred in BOUND BY HONOR directed by Taylor Hackford; the independent feature COME AND TAKE IT DAY from director Jim Mendiola; and turned in a funny, touching and very memorable performance as a preoperative transsexual in director Darnell Martin’s I LIKE IT LIKE THAT. Borrego’s television credits include the hit CBS series C.S.I.: MIAMI and a recurring role on FOX’s smash series 24. He appeared in the Showtime feature THE MALDONADO MIRACLE directed by Salma Hayek. And he also recurred recently on the NBC series MEDICAL INVESTIGATION and the PBS series AMERICAN FAMILY.
Louis Mendoza, Lead Advisor, is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Chicano Studies at the University of Minnesota. He received his Ph.D. in English with a concentration in Ethnic and Third World Literatures from the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio, the University of Houston-Downtown, and Brown University. At UTSA he was an associate dean for the College of Liberal and Fine Arts and an Interim Director of the Hispanic Research Center. His research interests include Chicana/o literary and Cultural studies, U.S. immigration literature, prison literature, and oral histories. He is the author of Historia: The Literary Making of Chicana and Chicano History (Texas A&M Press, 2001), co-editor with S. Shankar of Crossing into America: The New Literature of Immigration (New Press, 2003), and most recently he is the editor of My Weapon is My Pen: raúlsalinas and the Jail Machine, Selected Prison Writings published by the University of Texas Press (2006).
Alan Eladio Gómez is Assistant Professor of Latina/o Studies in the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity at Ithaca College. He holds a Ph.D. in Borderlands/U.S. History (2006) and an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Focus: social movements; U.S.-Mexico borderlands; U.S. Third World politics; Incarceration Studies; Anti-capitalist resistance movements; multiracial and international alliances. A media activist, he is part of Colectivo Radio Caracol, a media collective based in Austin, TX. Gómez also works with the Labor Defense Project (Austin) and the Immigrants Rights Coalition in Ithaca, NY. He is on the board of Red Salmon Arts and Cine Las Américas.
Antonia I. Castañeda, Associate Professor of History Department of History at St.Mary’s University in San Antonio. She received her Ph.D. in American History at Stanford University and her M.A. in Latin American Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. She has also taught at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California at Santa Barbara. In 2002 she was a National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar: for the Faculty Seminar and Public Lecture “Gender and Sexuality on the Borderlands” at the University of Texas, El Paso. In 2002 she was part of the Ena Thompson Distinguished Lecture Series at Pomona College, Claremont, CA. In 2005 She was the Keynote Speaker at the Ford Fellows Conference Social Science Research Council.
B.V. Olguin, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Division of English, Classics, Philosophy, and Communication at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, with specialization in U.S. Latina/o and Latin American literature, film, and popular culture. He previously taught in the Department of English at Cornell University, where he offered courses in Chicana/o and Latina/o film. A native of Houston, Texas, Professor Olguin has worked with Carlos Calbillo on several documentary projects, including El Corrido de Joe Campos Torres, featuring Jesus “Chuy” Negrete, and the award-winning Chicano Week ‘87.
Norma E. Cantú currently serves as Professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is the editor of a book series, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo: Borderlands Culture and Tradition, at Texas A&M University Press and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Author of the award-winning Canícula Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, and co-editor of Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change, she has just finished a novel, Cabañuelas and is currently working on another novel tentatively titled: Champú, or Hair Matters, and an ethnography of the Matachines de la Santa Cruz, a religious dance drama from Laredo, Texas.
Dr. Arturo Madrid is the Norine R. and T. Frank Murchison Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University and the recipient of the Charles Frankel Prize in the Humanities in 1976, awarded by the National Endowment of the Humanities. From 1984 to 1993 Madrid served as the founding president of the Tomas Rivera Center, the nation’s first institute for policy studies on Latino issues. In addition to having held academic and administrative appointments at Dartmouth College, The University of California, San Diego, and the University of Minnesota, he has also served as Director of the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) in the U.S. Department of Education as well as National Director of the Ford Foundation’s Graduate Fellowship Program for Mexican Americans, Native Americans and Puerto Ricans.
Dr. Madrid has served on the boards of some of the nation’s most prominent educational organizations, including among others: The College Board, The Association for the Advancement of Higher Education, The Council for Basic Education, The National Center for Education and the Economy, The Center for Early Adolescence, The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and The National Civic League. He is an elected fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, the nation’s premier foreign policy association, and of the National Academy for Public Administration, which honors persons with a distinguished record in public administration. Currently Madrid serves as a member of the board of directors of Arte P™blico Press and the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, as well as on the National Advisory Board to the National Hispanic Cultural Center.
Dr. Madrid holds a Ph.D. degree in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from UCLA as well as honorary doctorates from New England College, The California State University at Hayward, Mt. Holyoke College, Pomona College, and Texas Lutheran University.