For 45 years, Lourdes Portillo has been using film as a medium to conceptualize Latino identity in America. Portillo showcased a selection of her films in a lecture on Tuesday in Dartmouth Hall, highlighting how she has worked to draw attention to social injustice using documentaries, movies and stage writing.
Portillo said her first experience with filmmaking came at the age of 21, when she worked as a production assistant on a documentary as a favor to a friend. Her interest in filmmaking was encouraged by the documentary's producer, who recognized her talent early on.
"I remember he told me, None of these people know what they're doing, except you.' Those words gave me the impulse to continue on with my work because somebody recognized that I love this and I can do this," Portillo said.
Following her initial experience with movie-making, Portillo began experimenting with directing, writing and producing her own works. Inspired by her love for Latino culture, as well as her passion for human rights, Portillo's films all have a strong message of hope and morality.
Portillo demonstrated her evolution as an artist by leading the audience through a timeline of her works, describing the creation of each film and explaining how each work has influenced her as an artist.
Portillo began with "After the Earthquake," a narrative she directed and co-produced in 1979 about a Nicaraguan woman who immigrates to San Francisco after the Nicaraguan earthquake of 1976. Portillo made the film in support of the Sandinistas of Nicaragua.
"It was a time of ferment and insurrection in Latin America," Portillo said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "This was our contribution to that struggle."
Portillo said that when she showed the film to her Sandinista colleagues, they criticized her work for being "idealized fiction."
"They told us it was just our idea of what was happening," Portillo said at the event. "And they kind of disowned us. We were crestfallen, but we just kept going."
Portillo also screened her 1986 Academy Award-nominated documentary, "Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo." The film focuses on a movement of hundreds of Argentinean mothers whose children went missing under the dictatorship of Jorge Videla.
"Las Madres' was significant to me in a lot of ways," Portillo said. "These films create a lot of post traumatic stress syndrome in the filmmaker. Part of my working through Las Madres' was trying not to hate all Argentineans and the Argentinean junta for what they were doing. And the way I did that was by going back to my own culture."
In the emotional aftermath of "Las Madres," Portillo said she was led to focus on her own Mexican heritage. She then created the film, "La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead," a light-hearted documentary that portrays the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead.
"From Days of the Dead,' I learned to honor the voices of the people I interview in my documentaries, to see things from all different points of view, no matter how farfetched they seem," Portillo said.
In her next film, Portillo worked to find her own artistic voice. In "The Devil Never Sleeps," her autobiographical documentary on the death of her Uncle Oscar, Portillo explored "the idea that everyone has their own truth." Portillo used a docu-mystery style for the film, traveling to Mexico to research her uncle and the circumstances surrounding his death.
"Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena" was filmed in 1999. Portillo, in an interview with The Dartmouth, called this her most "compromised" work, as it was censored by Abraham Quintanilla, Selena's father, before being released.
"Selena gave Mexican girls a sense of Chicana sexuality," Portillo said. "They realized they could sing and dance and not be blond, like everyone else on TV. I was happy to tell her story."
The final film Portillo discussed was "Senorita Extravida," which examines the murder of hundreds of girls in Juarez, Mexico. The murders were first exposed in 1993, when it was discovered that over 350 girls that worked in the assembly plants that lined the Mexican-American border had been kidnapped, raped and killed.
"I wanted to make films that bring out another aspect of human nature, but it was very difficult to make a film like Senorita Extraviada. You see ... too much," Portillo said.
Portillo's distinguished film career has been characterized by her devotion to the Latino culture and a desire to call attention to injustices throughout the world.
"All cultures have a unique richness that artists have a duty to explore and celebrate," Portillo said. "I came to Dartmouth because I wanted students to share in the joy I feel when I embrace my culture."
