Lorena Manríquez and Marlene McCurtis
Lorena Manríquez is an award-winning independent filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her love of film began at an early age, watching Spanish and French films in Chile, where she was born and raised. Lorena has been the recipient of several industry fellowships including the NALIP Latino Producers Academy, the CPB/PBS Producers Academy, the NBPC New Media Institute, and the IFP Rough Cut Lab with her film Ulises’ Odyssey. During the 2007 IFP Market, she was nominated for the IFP/Fledgling Fund Emerging Latino Award. Her new film Siqueiros: Walls of Passion has been awarded two California Documentary Project grants by Cal Humanities, funding from the ITVS Diversity Development fund, and from LPB’s Public Media Content Fund.
Marlene McCurtis has over 20 years of documentary production experience. She worked as a producer/writer at Arnold Shapiro Productions for 10 years. There she produced several documentaries including the award winning film Hidden Victims: Children of Domestic Violence. Recently, she has directed for the Discovery Channel’s documentary series Adoption Stories, for the Peabody awarding winning PBS educational show A Place of Our Own/Los Niños en Su Casa, the National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer, and the A&E new series Beyond Scared Straight.