Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Lopez, Josue: Research Abstracts for Dalila Mendez

Alvarez, Sandra and Susan Zepeda. “Interview with Womyn Image Makers: A Colectiva of Queer Indígena Visionaries.” Spectator: USC Journal of Film and Television Criticism. Chicana Spectators and Mediamakers, vol. 26, no.1, 2006, pp. 127-134. https://cinema.usc.edu/archivedassets/097/15711.pdf 


An interview with Womyn Image Makers (WIM), Maritza Alvares, Dalila Mendez, Claudia Mercado, and Aurora Guerrero by Sandra Alvarez and Susy Zepeda from the Women of Color Research Cluster and Queer Latina Network in Santa Cruz. The interview took place in 2006 at the UC Santa Cruz 12th annual Women of Color Film and Video Festival. Womyn Image Makers (WIM) is a network of activist filmmakers and artists whose work centers Chicanx, Latinx, female, and queer perspectives through the visual arts. Womyn Image Makers (WIM) discuss their early collaborations beginning in 1999 and their work as community organizers in Boyle Heights through a Circulo de Mujeres. Dalila Mendez, the in-house production designer, shares how she explores the legacies of indigenismo and matriarchy through her visual art in films like Viernes Girl and Pura Lengua.


Díaz-Sánchez, Micaela Jamaica. “RE-MAPPING QUEER DESIRE(S) ON GREATER LOS ANGELES: The Decolonial Topographies of Aurora Guerrero and Dalila Paola Méndez.” Chicana/Latina Studies, vol. 17, no.1, 2017, pp. 94-117. https://thisbridgecalledcyberspace.net/FILES/4397.pdf 


Re-Mapping Queer Desire(s) on greater Los Angeles explores the works of film director Aurora Guerrero and visual artist Dalila Mendez as visions of decolonial topographies in Los Angeles. Guerrero and Mendez challenge normative representations of the city by featuring the experiences of queer, working-class, and immigrant women in their art. Their art highlights the cultural and economic impact of gentrification and environmental racism on Chicanx and Latinx communities. Guerrero’s and Mendez’s visual aesthetic is used as a framework to analyze contemporary articulations of queer Latina subjectivities in Los Angeles. Their collaboration on the film Mosquita y Mari, a story about a queer Latina teenager from Huntington Park, is an exploration of these subjectivities. 



Munroe, Roberta M. How Not to Make a Short Film: Secrets from a Sundance Programmer. New York: Hachette Books, 2014. https://pdf.zlibcdn.com/dtoken/6e5d0689f1517a5328ecea289358c8b7/How_Not_to_Make_a_Short_Film_Secrets_from_a_Sunda_854674_(z-lib.org).pdf 


Chapter six of How Not to Make a Short Film: Secrets from a Sundance Programmer, explores how to best navigate the casting process for a short film. Particularly, it focuses on good techniques for directing actors. Aurora Guerrero, a queer Chicanx director, is asked to provide some insight on how to best direct actors to obtain the desired performance. Guerrero works closely with her actors to build trust, allowing them to better embody the characters they’re playing. This technique has been crucial to her continued collaboration with Dalila Mendez and Womyn Image Makers (WIM) in films like Aqui Estamos y No Nos Vamos.


Self Help Graphics & Art. The Very Very Very Long Day. 22 August. 2020. 1-62. Web. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5953d7f83a0411214b269873/t/5f445182d139e66a86feb536/1598312850170/SHG_Verylongday_exhibition_catalog_2020_v4_compressed.pdf 


The Very Very Very Long Day, was a virtual group exhibition curated by Marvella Muro at the Self Help Graphics & Art community arts center in East Los Angeles. The exhibition opened on August 22, 2020. The works in the exhibition document the blurring of time, as days, turned into months during the mandatory quarantine to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. Some of the works in the exhibition reflect the social anxieties and frustrations that surfaced during the summer of 2020. The growing demands for social justice challenged visual artists to reimagine the meaning of normalcy in a post-pandemic world. For the exhibition, Dalila Mendez created We the Resilient, a mixed media collage on canvas celebrating the lives of the victims of police brutality. Mendez’s work challenges the viewer to fight for their rights, to be determined and resilient in the face of oppression.

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