film synopsis & credits director's bio director's statement

director's bio Lourdes Portillo was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and moved to the United States in 1960. She made her first film, a dramatic short called After the Earthquake, in 1979 and her most recent film, Corpus, a documentary about the late Tejana singer Selena, was released in 1999. Among the documentary, dramatic, experimental and performance films and videos she has made in between are the Academy Award-nominated Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (1986), La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead (1988), Vida (1989), Columbus on Trial (1992), Mirrors of the Heart for the PBS series, Americas (1993), The Devil Never Sleeps (1994), and Sometimes My Feet Go Numb and 13 Days, a multi-media piece for a nationally toured play by the San Francisco Mime Troupe (1997).