Lourdes Portillo: Last News

Lourdes Portillo, the Mexican-born, Chicana-identified filmmaker who crafted nuanced film and video works that center the emotions and circumstances of diverse Latinx experiences, died on Saturday, April 20 at her home in San Francisco. She died peacefully, surrounded by her three sons and a younger sister, according to a friend.

Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, has died at the age of 80.The Mexican director, producer and writer, perhaps best known for the 1986 film The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, passed away in her San Francisco home.Portillo was known for her bold filmmaking style that confronted issues around race, sexuality and social justice, and often featured stories and experiences of Latin American, Mexican and Chicano culture.Born in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1943, she moved to Los Angeles as a teenager, where she became part of a Marxist filmmaking collective, Cine Manifest, in the ‘70s, eventually working on her first film, After the Earthquake, in 1979.In addition to her extensive work in documentary features, Portillo went on to gain a reputation in the worlds of video installation and screenwriting, and also worked in investigative journalism and visual art.She co-directed The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo with Susana Blaustein Muñoz.

Selena Kuznikov Lourdes Portillo, filmmaker of the 1994 documentary “The Devil Never Sleeps” and a visual artist, investigative journalist and social activist, died Saturday in her San Francisco home. She was 80. Portillo focused her work on writing, directing and producing film and videos that centered the emotions and circumstances of Latin American, Mexican and Chicano experiences.

The Sundance Institute has named the 2023 grantees of its Documentary Fund, supporting the work of nonfiction filmmakers from around the globe, with 23 projects being selected for unrestricted grant funding totaling just over $1M.

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures wraps up its 10-day major retrospective of filmmaker Lourdes Portillo’s work later today, with a screening of her 2001 documentary Missing Young Woman (Señorita Extraviada). 

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures today announced the first round of exhibition rotations scheduled for the 2022–2023 season, which further its mission to advance the understanding, celebration, and preservation of cinema.