Laura Varela is a cultural translator and channels her upbringing on the US/ Mexico border in El Paso, TX, into her work, transcending cultural, linguistic, and physical borders through film and contemporary art installations. She is based in San Antonio, TX, a hub for her filmmaking and artistic endeavors. She is a producer for the VoxFem Network, a platform for innovative, international women artists and changemakers. Her work as a Producer/Director/Writer for documentary films further underscores her commitment to social justice movements and her life’s mission to use art and storytelling to uplift the Latinx/Chicanx community. AMERICAN SONS, Produced by Laura Varela and Produced/Directed by Andrew James Gonzales will have it’s World Premiere at SXSW in 2025.
Varela’s documentary, AS LONG AS I REMEMBER: AMERICAN VETERANOS, was broadcast nationally on PBS from 2010 to 2016 via American Public Television. UN TRIP: RAÚLRSALINAS AND THE POETRY OF LIBERATION (documentary short) by Anne Lewis and Laura Varela has completed its film festival run and has won numerous awards and broadcast on PBS stations across Texas as part of the Frame of Mind Series. She is the Associate Producer on Anne Lewis’s 2028 film A STRIKE AND AND UPRISING (IN TEXAS!) She produced the related educational shorts and helped develop the educational website.
She is developing a feature film, QUEEN OF THE ACCORDION, based on the life of Conjunto musician Eva Ybarra; and the documentary REBECCA FLORES: UNDER THE SOUTH TEXAS SUN with Anne Lewis.
Varela’s projects have received funding from Latino Public Broadcasting’s Public Media Content Fund, The Jacquie Jones Memorial Scholars Fund by Black Public Media, California Humanities Documentary Fund, Humanities Texas, ITVS Diversity Development Fund, The National Association of Latino Arts and Culture National Fund for the Arts, the Bexar County Public Arts Fund, and the City of San Antonio Arts and Culture.
Varela lectures and screens her work nationally and internationally at cultural centers and Universities. She taught classes in 2012-2013 on documentary film in the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas San Antonio. Varela is an alumnus of the PBS Producers Academy, the NALAC Leadership Institute, the NALIP Producers Academy, the NALIP Latino Media Market, and the Creative Capital Professional Development Workshop. She is a graduate of the University of Texas Department of Radio-TV and Film. Artist Residencies include Swarthmore College, Art for Change, NYC, and the Hochschule Niederrhein, Faust Academy, and the University of Bielefeld in Germany.
