DIRECTOR
Photo Credit: Claudio Rocha
RENEE TAJIMA-PEÑA is an Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker whose films on immigration, race, and social issues include Who Killed Vincent Chin? My America…or Honk if You Love Buddha, Labor Women, Calavera Highway, Asian Americans, and the May 19 Project. Her films have screened at Cannes, New York Film Festival, Sundance, and the Whitney Biennial. She is a professor of Asian American Studies and endowed chair and the Director of the Center of EthnoCommunications at UCLA. She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, Alpert Award in the Arts, the USA Broad Fellowship, and two Peabody Awards.
PRODUCER
Photo Credit: Chris Velasco
VIRGINIA ESPINO is a historian at the UCLA Center for Oral History Research, and has conducted oral histories with major figures in the Latina/o community. Her research on coercive sterilization at LACMC provided the basis for the documentary project. Her research was published Las Obreras: Chicana Politics of Work and Family, edited by Vicki L. Ruiz, and Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia. She has served on the California Commission for Sex Equity, and the Los Angeles Chicano/Latino Education Committee.
EDITOR
JOHANNA DEMETRAKAS has a career as a director and editor spanning over forty years. Her editing credits include the The World According to Sesame Street, Angels in the Dust, Amandla: A Revolution in Four Part Harmony, Manuel Ocampo: God is My Co-Pilot, and Tajima-Peña’s films, Calavera Highway, My Journey Home, “The New Americans,” My America, and The Last Beat Movie. She directed the new documentary Crazy Wisdom, co-directed and edited the Bus Riders Union with Haskell Wexler, and was a director on Some Nudity Required, and the classic documentaries Womanhouse, Out of History: The Making of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party and Celebration at Big Sur.
CINEMATOGRAPHER
CLAUDIO ROCHA is a veteran cinematographer whose credits include Kingdom of Shadows and Reportero (director Bernardo Ruiz), The Mexican Suitcase (director Trisha Ziff), Harlistas: An American Journey (director Alfredo de Villa), and documentaries for director Philip Rodriguez, Ruben Salazar: Man in the Middle, Latinos ’08, Brown is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream, and Los Angeles Now. He was a cinematographer on Bernardo Ruiz’s The American Experience: Roberto Clemente, Sydney Pollack’s Sketches of Frank Gehry, and feature films such as Jolene and The Whole Wide World (director Dan Ireland), The Maldonado Miracle (director Salma Hayek) and Picture Bride (director Kayo Hatta). Rocha also directed the documentary series Cuidades del Mexico Antiquo.
COMPOSER
BRONWEN JONES composes music for documentary films, industrials, and public service announcements and also orchestrates for feature films. She has received an Emmy for writing music for the American Public Television Series "Your Turn To Care," and was nominated for a South East Regional Emmy for her score of the PBS documentary Sisters Of Selma: Bearing Witness For Change. Other documentaries that Bronwen has scored are Good Kurds, Bad Kurds, Roots In The Sand, and Pictures From The Old Country. Bronwen has been orchestrator for Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek for 12 years. Films include Perfume, Sophie Scholl, Iron-Jawed Angels, One Hour Photo, The Cave, One Missed Call and Anamorph.