Diana Sanchez

Diana Sanchez is an International Programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival®, responsible for introducing audiences to the best in Latin American cinema. The year after she joined the Festival in 2002, she programmed the Festival’s spotlight on Brazil, Vida de Novo. Sanchez subsequently programmed two surveys of Argentine Cinema for TIFF Cinematheque, in 2004 and 2006. Also in 2006, she programmed a week of Cuban cinema at the Royal Ontario Museum. Sanchez is currently a program consultant for the International Film Festival Rotterdam, a senior program consultant for the Miami International Film Festival, and has been involved in a variety of other festivals and cinematic presentations. She also programs the Calgary Latin Wave with the PROA Foundation in Argentina. In 2007 Sanchez was on the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture Film Fund jury and in 2008 was on the first Premiera Copia jury at the Havana Film Festival. She has also been a jury member for the script development fund at the Colombian Ministry of Culture. Recently, Sánchez has been appointed Artistic Director of the Panama International Film Festival, a new festival currently in its second year. She has a Masters in Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto.

José Luis Rebordinos

José Luis Rebordinos holds a degree in Special Pedagogy. Director of the Donostia Kultura Film Unit for the last 22 years. Director for 21 years of the Horror and Fantasy Film Festival and director for 8 years of the Human Rights Film Festival, both in San Sebastian. He has directed the Nosferatu collection for 22 years. He is the co-author of several books on Basque filmmakers including Elías Querejeta, Montxo Armendáriz, Antxon Eceiza, Julio Medem, and Javier Aguirresarobe, among others, and on Asian cinema (Shinya Tsukamoto, poeta y guerrillero del cinematógrafo). He has also written on a variety of subjects (El dolor, los nervios culturales del sufrimiento – Breve historia del cortometraje vasco). Before taking up his position as Director General of San Sebastian Festival on January 1st, 2011, he had been a member of its Management Committee for the previous 15 years.

Carlos A. Gutiérrez

Carlos A. Gutiérrez is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Cinema Tropical, the premier presenter of Latin American cinema in the United States. Founded in 2001 with the mission of distributing, programming, and promoting what was to become the biggest boom of Latin American cinema in decades, Cinema Tropical is thriving as a dynamic and groundbreaking 501 (c)(3) non-profit media arts organization experimenting in the creation of better and more effective strategies for the distribution and exhibition of foreign cinema in the U.S. Gutiérrez has programmed numerous film series at various international cinematèques and cultural institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, BAMcinématek and the Guggenheim Museum. Along with Mahen Bonetti, he curated the 53rd edition of the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. He has been a guest lecturer at several universities throughout the country and has served as a jury member for different film festivals including the Morelia Film Festival and SANFIC, Santiago de Chile Film Festival. Between 1998 and 2003 he worked at the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York as Director of Film and Performing Arts. He holds an MA in Cinema Studies from New York University and a BA in Communications from Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City).

Kathleen Vernon

Kathleen Vernon teaches Spanish and Latin American cinema, culture and literature at SUNY Stony Brook. Her publications include the books, Post-Franco, Postmodern: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar, The Spanish Civil War and the Visual Arts, and dozens of articles on various aspects of Spanish-language cinema from the 1930s to the present. She is co-editor of the journal Studies in Hispanic Cinemas and is currently completing a book titled The Rhythms of History: Cinema, Music and Popular Memory in Contemporary Spain.

Paul Julian Smith

Paul Julian Smith is a specialist in film and television in Spain and Mexico. He is now a Distinguished Professor in the Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Program in the Graduate Center, City University of New York and was for twenty years the Professor of Spanish at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is a columnist for Film Quarterly and has been a juror at film festivals in Morelia, Mexico, and San Sebastián, Spain. His sixteen authored books include Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar (Verso), and Amores Perros (British Film Institute). His most recent book is Spanish Practices: Literature, Cinema, Television (Oxford: Legenda, 2012); and forthcoming in 2013 from Polity Press is Mexican Screen Fiction: Between Cinema and Television. He was a juror at the Morelia International Film Festival in 2008 and for the Cinema Tropical prize for best Latin American film 2010. Follow him on twitter: @pauljuliansmith

Paz Lázaro

Paz Lázaro (Sevilla, 1972) holds a Degree in Spanish Philology, English Philology and Sociology. Panorama Programme Manager for the Berlin Film Festival since 2006 and member of the selection committee for the competition since 2007, Paz Lázaro has been engaged in film production over the years with feature films such as Nómadas (Spain, 2000), Cosa de brujas (Spain, 2002), Sobre el arcoiris (Spain, 2003), and the documentary Fallen Angel: Gram Parsons (Germany, 2004) as well as theater production with Constanza Macras‚ Dorky Park Company (No Wonder, Sure).

Part of the Berlin International Film Festival since 2000, she is also a member of the Spanish Film Commission (ICAA) for new directors and international co-productions. She has been a member of International Juries at San Sebastián Film Festival, Pula and Nordisk Panorama.

Elena Fortes

Elena Fortes graduated with a B.A. in Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and completed Harvard University’s Career Discovery Program in Architecture. She did further studies in industrial and multimedia design at Centro (Mexico City) and has since specialized in graphic design, film, and multimedia. Since 2005, Fortes works as the director of Ambulante, a non-profit organization founded by Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, and Pablo Cruz, in order to support and promote documentary film culture in Mexico. Every year, Ambulante carries out the Ambulante Documentary Film Festival, a traveling film festival that brings a selection of over 50 groundbreaking films to more than 100 venues located in 12 regions across the country.

Fortes has been part of the programming committee for the Morelia International Film Festival for the past four years and has served as a member of the nominating committee for the 2007 Renew Media Grant for film and media projects, ITVS International Call, as well as a member of the jury for several international festivals, including Hot Docs, SXSW, Silverdocs, and the Guadalajara International Film Festival. Fortes was one of the finalists of the International Young Screen Entrepreneur Award 2010.

Marcela Goglio

Marcela Goglio has been the programmer of Latinbeat, Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual festival of new Latin American cinema, since 1999. She is a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she studied Communication Sciences (University of Buenos Aires) and Film (Universidad del Cine). She has lived in Mexico, El Salvador, and Costa Rica, where she worked as a journalist, before moving to New York to study Film and Literature at Columbia University. Until 2009 she also co-programmed the New York Hispanic Film Series organized by Columbia University and Instituto Cervantes, an annual series that portrays the Latino immigrant experience in New York. In addition, she reviews and translates screenplays for Latin American film production companies and gives talks about Latin American cinema in panels and conferences at universities and organizations in New York City and abroad.

Spanish Film Club STAFF

MARTA SANCHEZ, Director marta@spanishfilmclub.com
DANIELA BAJAR, Semi-Theatrical & Educational Manager info@spanishfilmclub.com