Mexican filmmaker Lourdes Portillo has passed away at the age of 80. Considered a pioneer in the documentary film industry, the Oscar-nominated director, producer, and writer passed away in her San Francisco home. Portillo was known for her artistic film-making style that tackled social justice, sexuality, and race issues while shedding light on the experiences of Latin American and Chicano cultures.
Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1943, Portillo relocated to Los Angeles while in her teens and became a member of Cine Manifest, a Marxist filmmaking collective in the ’70s. After her first film “After the Earthquake” in 1979, she went on to gain a reputation in the fields of video installation, screenwriting, investigative journalism, and visual art.
Portillo had a significant impact on documentary film-making, co-directing the 1986 documentary “The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo” with Susana Blaustein Muñoz, which followed a group of Argentinian women who met regularly after the ‘disappearances’ of their sons by the military regime. The documentary won many international film awards and was nominated for the 1987 Oscars, though it lost out in the Best Documentary Feature category to “Broken Rainbow.”
Portillo’s succeeding films, such as “The Devil Never Sleeps” and “Missing Young Woman” which investigated the kidnap, rape, and murder of over 350 young women in Mexico, had a significant impact. Portillo had been planning a new documentary called “Looking at Ourselves” in recent years.
Portillo is survived by her younger sister and three sons
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