Discussion with Filmaker, Dolissa Medina August 25, 2010

Galeria de la Raza is pleased to host filmmaker and cultural worker, Dolissa Medina for an intimate discussion and samplings of her work.

History, memory and the exploration of urban space are at the heart of
Medina’s work. She is the creator of more than a dozen short film and video works, including the award-winning 19: Victoria Texas, An experimental short about the worst case of human smuggling in U.S. history.

For this highly anticipated event, Medina will screen a variety of shorts including The Moon Song of Assassination a deity creation story about Tejana singer Selena, who in 1995 at the brink of crossover success, was shot and killed by the president of her fan club. Using appropriated news accounts, performance footage, and NASA imagery of 1960s-era space exploration, this short tells the story of Selena’s ascension into America’s pantheon of martyred
cultural figures. Medina will also screen highlights from her film Cartography of Ashes (2006) about the legends and legacy of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire. In collaboration with the San Francisco Fire Department, Ms. Medina produced an outdoor screening of “Cartography of Ashes” on the side of a fire station for the City’s Earthquake Centennial.

The recipient of a 2010-11 Fulbright Fellowship to Berlin, Medina has screened her work internationally at festivals including Rotterdam and Oberhausen, Germany. She has served as a curator, film journalist, festival publicist, and filmmaker mentor. Originally from South Texas, Medina began her film career in San Francisco, a
city that continues to inspire much of her work. She holds journalism and history degrees from San Francisco State University, and is currently completing an MFA degree in the Visual Arts Department at UC-San Diego.

As a cultural worker, Ms. Medina was also an original founding member of Galeria de la Raza’s (Re)Generation Project, which in the 1990s ushered in a new wave of emerging Bay Area Latino artists, writers, filmmakers, performers, and community creators. In her capacity as a (Re)Generation member, she served on the project’s advisory board and helped author and edit several project publications.