Julia Scott-Stevenson

Julia is a writer and researcher of all things documentary, and even dabbles in making them herself from time to time.

Interview with Lourdes Portillo

28 January 2011 | 0:00 - By Julia Scott-Stevenson

One of the grand dames of documentary filmmaking has some insights to share from her years telling stories about women, human rights, and Latin America. Lourdes Portillo is a filmmaker whose work crosses fiction and non-fiction, and POV has posted a video interview with her.

Portillo talks about her desire to see documentaries that incorporate more comedy, playfulness and art – “There’s a seriousness that is just overwhelming, like a dark cloud over our heads,” she says. She’s hopeful that increasing cross-genre work will help address this. “That is the great thing about documentary, that we’re adhering to truth as we see it,” she says. “But at the same time, there’s a lot of possibilities, of art, imagination, poetry, metaphor, allegory, all of that.” Watch the interview to see more soundbites and some snippets of her films as well.

Lourdes-Portillo_862758246

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About this Blog

Julia Scott-Stevenson Julia is a writer and researcher of all things documentary, and even dabbles in making them herself from time to time. She lived in the Pacific Islands of Fiji and Samoa for a few years, where she made a documentary about the inaugural Miss Tokelau beauty pageant and a short documentary about climate change in Samoa, which screened at the inaugural Pacific Climate Change Film Festival. While in the Pacific she was subjected to limited internet connectivity, and was staggered to discover the possibilities in online documentary on her return at the end of 2008. She has since been making up for lost time by undertaking a PhD researching cross-platform documentary, and also working on a database documentary about volunteers. Julia is also on the programming team for Antenna International Documentary Film Festival.

 
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