Latino Media Arts & Studies, or L-MÁS, a program of the Moody College of Communication at UT-Austin, has a three-fold mission: to support the growth of Latino film, television, journalism, and advertising; to support Latina and Latino student media makers, journalists, and advertising professionals; and to foster Latino media studies scholarship.
This mission is one with a broad and substantial impact. Latinos, 19 percent of Americans in 2020, are too often misrepresented or not depicted at all in U.S. media culture. Given that the entertainment and news media illustrate and reinforce how ethnic groups are valued in a society, this has an impact that is felt individually, locally, nationally, and globally. Latino Media Arts & Studies is dedicated to making a difference in this regard.
Filmmaker Deborah S. Esquenazi
Recent Speaker Series Event: A Conversation with Filmmaker Deboarh S. Esquenazi
October 15, 2020, 3:30PM (EVENT HAS PASSED)
Deborah S. Esquenazi is an award-winning film director, screenwriter, and investigative journalist, based in Austin, Texas. Her interest in upending the oftentimes sensationalist True Crime genre informs the neorealist approach she takes to her work and her films foreground issues of identity within queer, Latino, and other marginalized communities in the United States. Her latest documentary, El Vacío, which is part of the New York Times’s Op-Doc Series, is nominated for a 2020 Emmy award. Esquenazi’s first feature, Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four, was also nominated for an Emmy and earned a variety of other distinctions, including the Peabody Award (2016). Southwest of Salem played a key role in the exoneration of four Latina lesbians who spent over a decade in prison for a crime they did not commit. The film is currently being adapted for television.
The conversation will be moderated by Iliana Sosa, Assistant Professor of Radio-Television-Film.
Co-sponsored by the Departments of Radio-Television-Film and Mexican American and Latina/o Studies and the Program in LGBTQ Studies
Latino Media Arts & Studies is a program of the Moody College of Communication. It is coordinated by faculty and graduate students in the Moody College's Department of Radio-Television-Film, and includes faculty affiliates from both the Moody College of Communication and the College of Liberal Arts.
