Carmen Oquendo

Email: villar_at_fas.harvard.edu

Biografia:
Carmen Oquendo Villar es cineasta y practica la critica cultural. Se encuentra terminando su doctorado en Harvard University, con una tesis sobre el uso de los medios de comunicacion durante el golpe de estado chileno de 1973. Su tesis explora la relacion entre tecnologia y autoritarismo. Los estudios de genero y sexualidad en un contexto latinoamericano es un importante area de interes academico y politico y artistico. Como miembro de Somos Latin@s LGBT, la mayor organizacion latina lgbt del noroeste de EEUU, ayuda a organizar la semana de orgullo latino lgbt de Boston. Carmen es co-editora de una columna mensual en In Newsweekly, el mayor periodico LGBT de la Nueva Inglaterra.

Su trabajo filmico incluye una serie de documentales sobre la comunidad latina queer de Boston, realizados para el Film Studies Center (Harvard), WGBH (Boston PBS) y VES (Visual and Environmental Studies).

Sus films y videos han sido mostrados en el Harvard Film Archive, el Museo de Bellas Artes de Boston. Boston de NALIP (National Association of Latino Independent Producers). Tambien ha sido parte de festivales de cine en diversas ciudades estadounidenses y de muestras internacionales (Chile, Brasil, Argentina, Espana, Colombia, y Puerto Rico).

Carmen también trabaja en el mundo de los festivales de cine. Ha trabajado por los ultimos tres anos en el Festival de Cine Latino de Boston (www.bliff.org) y ha sido curadora de varios festivales en Cambridge, San Juan, Bogota y Medellin. Actualmente colabora con la seccion de Boston de NALIP (National Association of Latino Independent Producers). Es presentadora y productora del programa televisivo “Agentes Culturales” en Cambridge Community Television (CCTV).

*** Biography ***
Carmen Oquendo-Villar (Harvard Ph.D) is the Jacob Javits Fellow at New York University’s Kanbar Institute of Film and Television in Tisch School of the Arts, where she is continuing her filmmaking training, and at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, where she serves as film curator.

She has published academic articles on diverse cultural fields including film, narrative, performance studies, media and politics, and gender and sexuality in several scholarly publications including E-misférica: Performance and Politics in the Americas, Revista: Harvard Review of Latin America, and Memory Market in Latin America, a forthcoming book from Duke University Press. She is completing a book on Chile’s 1973 Coup as a performance and media event, with Augusto Pinochet as its leading political icon.

As a visual artist and filmmaker (www.oquendovillar.com), she has focused her work around issues of gender and sexuality, having completed a series of film portraits of members of the Boston and Puerto Rico Latin@ trans community. She is currently working on a documentary with José Correa about beauty ideals and practices amongst the Puerto Rican transgender community. “Trans,” her latest curatorial work for the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, has been exhibited in Space Other Gallery in Boston and in the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires.

She is currently curating a film and video program for the 2009 Encuentro in Bogotá about citizenship and cultural rights, after having served for 6 years as part of the Boston Latino International Film Festival’s curatorial team.