14 Facts About Lourdes Portillo

Lourdes Portillo was a Mexican film director, producer, and writer.

Lourdes Portillo films have been widely studied and analyzed, particularly by scholars in the field of Chicano studies.

Lourdes 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.

Lourdes Portillo became a participating member of a collective called Cine Manifest, a Marxist collective that created documentaries and was slowly beginning to make feature-length films.

Lourdes Portillo began working as Stephen Lighthill's assistant in the collective's feature, Over-Under, Sideways-Down.

In 1976, Lourdes Portillo established her own independent film company Xochitl Productions.

Lourdes Portillo was involved in multiple film communities and panels, working to encourage more Third World filmmakers into entering the film industry.

Lourdes Portillo was part of the CARA Exhibit [Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation in UCLA] as an advisor, and was part of the board of the Film Arts Foundation and AIVF.

Lourdes Portillo died in San Francisco on 20 April 2024, at the age of 80.

Fast-forwarding to her film Corpus: A Home Movie About Selena, Lourdes Portillo weaved the story of Tejana singer Selena's life with the significance around fans, the body, and patriarchy.

Lourdes Portillo was able to gain the support of Abraham Quintanilla, Selena's father, for her documentary and gained access to Selena's music and Beta video copies of performances and footage unavailable to the general public under the condition that Portillo were to follow some of Abraham's film demands and eliminate certain parts he disliked.

Lourdes Portillo stated that she showed her an article stating the discovery of about thirty women found dead under similar circumstances in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Concerned with the lack of coverage, Lourdes Portillo decided on creating a documentary dedicated to these young women disappearing in Juarez, interviewing family members and exploring the many branches of power behind the lack of coverage surrounding these cases.

Since her first film in 1979, Lourdes Portillo produced and directed nearly a dozen others representing her creative filmmaking style as a visual artist.