Señorita Extraviada, Missing Young Woman

A film by Lourdes Portillo

US | 2001 | 74 minutes | Color | DVD | Subtitled | Order No. 03776

SENORITA EXTRAVIADA, MISSING YOUNG WOMAN tells the haunting story of the more than 350 kidnapped, raped and murdered young women of Juárez, Mexico.

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SYNOPSIS

SENORITA EXTRAVIADA, MISSING YOUNG WOMAN tells the haunting story of the more than 350 kidnapped, raped and murdered young women of Juárez, Mexico. Visually poetic, yet unflinching in its gaze, this compelling investigation unravels the layers of complicity that have allowed for the brutal murders of women living along the Mexico-U.S. border. In the midst of Juárez’s international mystique and high profile job market, there exists a murky history of grossly underreported human rights abuses and violence against women. The climate of violence and impunity continues to grow, and the murders of women continue to this day. Relying on what Portillo comes to see as the most reliable of sources – the testimonies of the families of the victims –SEÑORITA EXTRAVIADA, MISSING YOUNG WOMAN documents a two-year search for the truth in the underbelly of the new global economy. An Independent Television Service (ITVS) Production.

PRESS

"...unforgettable...strike[s] a note of resistance and...show[s] how sexual violence is a problem for different nationalities of women."

Elizabeth Martinez Director, Institute for MultiRacial Justice

“…serves as an example for girls and women struggling against justice. When the women of Juarez stand up and speak for themselves…we know that we can do the same in our communities.”

Lu Henry Mujeres Latinas En Accion

”A powerful documentary that would be a wonderful addition to classes on Mexico, contemporary Latin America, gender, women, violence, work, the law, human rights, globalization and a host of other topics.”

Ann Twinam Professor of History, University of Cincinnati

“Heartbreaking”

Sarah Goodyear Time Out New York

“Portillo’s film succeeds…Original, eloquent…”

Rita Gonzalez Release Print

" Nothing she's (Lourdes Portillo) done has been as wrenching as 'Señorita Extraviada'…'"

Edward Guthmann San Francisco Chronicle

"Elegiac, with low-key persistence, [director Lourdes Portillo] uncovers the outlines of what seem to be a vast conspiracy."

Kevin Thomas Los Angeles Times

"...[Portillo has created] a meditative investigation...with real poetic power."

Stuart Klawans The Nation

"Señorita Extraviada is a well-crafted documentary that can be used in the classroom to discuss structural, cultural, and direct violence against women in the context of capitalism. Besides, instead of giving a portrait of women as passive victims, they manage to show them as agents of change."

Orianna Calderon Films for the Feminist Classroom

"... filmmaker Lourdes Portillo steps into this chilling murder mystery with a haunting documentary…"

Anne-Marie O'Connor Los Angeles Times

"...moving account of an outrage that has continued for nearly a decade, with no end in sight. It's more gripping than 'Law & Order' and more tragic than anything a dramatist could invent."

Joanne Weintraub Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"She (Lourdes Portillo) won a 1986 Oscar nomination for 'Las Madres: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo,' a film about political dissidents in Argentina, studied AIDS and Latinas in 'Vida' and explored the legacy of Tejano singer Selena in 'Corpus.' But nothing she's done has been as wrenching as 'Señorita Extraviada…'"

Edward Guthmann San Francisco Chronicle

"'Señorita Extraviada' is further proof that she (Lourdes Portillo) is one of the most important filmmakers chronicling the Latino Experience today."

Mike McDaniel Houston Chronicle

”…Powerful…”

Davis Stratton Variety

"Telling the tale mainly through the words of the victims' relatives and news footage, Portillo recounts what is a haunting story of corruption and injustice but also one of courage in the face of nearly insurmountable odds."

Minerva Canto The Orange County Register

"...a stunning portrait of the callousness, willful ignorance and sheer incompetence of police investigating a horrifying, nearly decade-long string of killings in Mexico."

Basem Boshra Montreal Gazette

”...a powerful film that bears witness to the humanity of the victims…and a powerful testament to the bravery of the women who have refused to be intimidated and have dared to speak out, organize and protest. 'Señorita Extraviada' is a cry of outrage and a call to activism.”

Marcia Gillespie Ms. Magazine

“Highly recommended for college, university and general adult collections…"

Karen Plummer Educational Media Reviews Online

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

Thessaloniki FF, FIPRESCI Award, Best Foreign Film
Barcelona Human Rights FF, Gold Gandhi Award
Cinequest - Audience Award for Best Doc.
Fest.Intel.de Films De Femmes, Audience Award
HumanRightsWatch Intel.FF, Nestor Almendros Prize
IDA-nomination Distinguish Doc.Achievement Award
Malaga Film Festival - Grand Prize Best Doc.
Sundance Film Festival - Special Jury Prize
I.D.N.M.-Prix Tempete Radio, Best Feature Film
Academy of C.A.S.-Mx.- Ariel, Best Mexican Doc.

San Francisco International Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival
Chicago International Film Festival
Halfway to Hollywood Film Festival
Torino Film Festival
Goteborg Film Festival
Pacific Film Archives Human Rights Watch International Film Festival
San Antonio Cinefestival
San Diego Latino Film Festival
Cleveland International Film Festival
Boston Women's Film Festival

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Lourdes Portillo

Mexico-born and Chicana identified, Lourdes Portillo is a writer / director / producer of films focused on the search for Latino identity. She has worked in a richly varied range of forms, from television documentary to satirical video-film collage.

Portillo got her first filmmaking experience at the age of twenty-one when a friend in Hollywood asked her to help out on a documentary. Her formal training began several years later. An apprenticeship at the San Francisco NABET (National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians) led to a job as Stephen Lighthill's first camera assistant on Cine Manifest's feature OVER, UNDER, SIDEWAYS, DOWN. In 1978, after graduating from The San Francisco Art Institute, Portillo used American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Award monies to create her internationally praised narrative film AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE / DESPUES DEL TERREMOTO, about a Nicaraguan refugee living in San Francisco.

THE MOTHERS OF PLAZA DE MAYO, the result of a three year collaboration with writer / director Susana Munoz, was a pivotal film in Portillo's career. Its nomination for the Academy's Best Documentary in 1985 and the twenty other awards it received internationally earned Portillo the PBS funding she needed for her next film, LA OFRENDA: THE DAYS OF THE DEAD. Completed in 1989 and greeted with widespread critical acclaim, LA OFRENDA was Portillo's most serious attempt to date to challenge the notion that, as she says, "documentary is always associated with injustice." In it she portrays in loving color a Mexican and Chicano holiday -- the celebration of "the days of the dead" -- and initiates the dream-like structure that has become a hallmark of her recent work.

A grant from the NEA Inter-Arts program allowed Portillo to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of America in her own ironic fashion. Her 1993 film, COLUMBUS ON TRIAL showed at the London and Sundance Film festivals as well and was selected for the 1993 Whitney Museum Biennial. In 1994 she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in recognition of her contributions to filmmaking. All of her work is widely shown in classrooms and academic circles and is integrated into curriculum studies.

Portillo’s films have screened at premiere cultural institutions and events around the world such as the Venice Biennale, Toronto International Film Festival, London Film Festival, the São Paulo International Film Festival, the Whitney Museum for American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in the New Directors/New Films program presented by the Film Society at Lincoln Center and the New York Museum of Modern Art. She has been honored with over ten career retrospectives, including exhibitions at the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art, the Cineteca Nacional de Mexico, the Pacific Film Archive, Museum of Modern Art New York, and Museum of Contemporary Art Buenos Aires. She is the subject of the critical anthology "Lourdes Portillo: The Devil Never Sleeps and Other Films" edited by Rosa Linda Fregoso (University of Texas Press, 2001) and the recipient of Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2016, she was honored with the distinguished Anonymous Was A Woman Award for her career artistic achievements. (03/19)

Subject Areas

Border Studies Chicana Globalization Human Rights Latin America Latina Sexual Assault Violence Against Women

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This classic rerelease from award-winning filmmaker Lourdes Portillo (Señorita Extraviada, Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo ) is a complex tribute to Selena, the Tejana superstar gunned down in 1995 at the age of 23 by the president of her fan club, just as she was on the brink of blockbuster crossover fame. While the story of her murder, which was filled with sex, glamour and betrayal, caught the attention of many outside the Chicano community, this film moves well beyond the sensational to present a nuanced feminist analysis of Selena's story. Clips of rare home movies, family photos, and glossy music videos from later in Selena's career are interspersed with lively conversations with her father, sister and Latina intellectuals that shed light into just who Selena was and what makes her such a powerful figure today. Staying true to the “home movie” feel, Portillo interviews ordinary people in Selena's hometown of Corpus Christie, including starry-eyed teenaged fans and tearful strangers who visit her grave. With a compassionate lens, Portillo places Selena's life and legacy in a cultural context, revealing powerful social forces that transformed a popular entertainer into a Chicana cultural icon turned modern-day saint.

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The Devil Never Sleeps

Academy Award nominated filmmaker Lourdes Portillo (LAS MADRES: THE MOTHERS OF PLAZA DE MAYO) mines the complicated intersections of analysis and autobiography, evidence and hypothesis, even melodrama and police procedure in this ground-breaking work. Early one Sunday morning, the filmmaker receives a phone call informing her that her beloved Tio (Uncle) Oscar Ruiz Almeida has been found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in Chihuahua, Mexico. His widow declares his death a suicide. Most of his family, however, cry murder and point to a number of suspects that include the widow herself. The filmmaker returns to the land of her birth to investigate her uncle's identity and death. Finding clues in old tales of betrayal, lust, and supernatural visitation, Portillo blends traditional and experimental techniques to capture the nuances of Mexican social and family order. Poetic and tragic, humorous and mythic, this film crosses the borders of personal values, cultural mores, and the discipline of filmmaking in a fascinating look at family mysteries. THE DEVIL NEVER SLEEPS was funded by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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After the Earthquake

This dramatic story follows a young Nicaraguan immigrant, Irene, as she faces the challenges of life in the U.S. and re-evaluates her relationships with her boyfriend and family. AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE explores the immigrant experience, particularly the cultural, political and economic differences between life in North and Latin America. Written with Nina Serrano, Lourdes Portillo was nominated for an Academy Award for her next film, LAS MADRES DE LA PLAZA DE MAYO, produced with Susana Munoz.

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Columbus on Trial

Inspired by the controversy surrounding the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of America, Portillo has fashioned a fanciful version of a courtroom were Columbus to return from his grave to stand trial. Cross-examined by the Latino comedy group, Culture Clash, Columbus is charged with atrocities against the Native peoples of the New World, including the rape and violent treatment of women. Satire and parody rule in this dynamic document about American history and colonization.

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Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza De Mayo

This Academy award-nominated documentary about the Argentinian mothers’ movement to demand to know the fate of 30,000 “disappeared” sons and daughters remains as extraordinarily powerful as when it was first released. As well as giving an understanding of Argentinian history in the ‘70s and ‘80s, LAS MADRES shows the empowerment of women in a society where women are expected to be silent. LAS MADRES provides a banner of hope in the international struggle for human rights.

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Maria in Nobody's Land

MARIA IN NOBODY'S LAND is an unprecedented and intimate look at the illegal and extremely dangerous journey of three Salvadoran women to the US.

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Children of Memory (Niños de la Memoria)

Hundreds of children disappeared without a trace during the Salvadoran civil war. Many were survivors of massacres carried out by the U.S.-trained Salvadoran army. Taken away from the massacre sites by soldiers, some grew up in orphanages or were "sold" into adoption abroad, not knowing their true history or identity. The film follows Margarita Zamora, an investigator with human rights organization Pro-Búsqueda as she traverses the Salvadoran countryside probing memory, swabbing DNA samples, and searching for disappeared children - including her own four siblings. In the United States, Jamie Harvey, adopted from El Salvador in 1980, dreams of locating her birth family; but with no information, no contacts and no access to the Salvadoran military war archives, she is losing hope. CHILDREN OF MEMORY weaves together separate yet intertwined journeys in the search for family, identity and justice in El Salvador.

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Absences (Ausencias)

ABSENCES, by award winning filmmaker Tatiana Huezo (The Tiniest Place), exposes the ever-intensifying phenomenon of enforced disappearance in Mexico. A boy and his father disappear one morning, snatched off the road by armed men. Left behind, alone with her daughter, Lulu, a victim who refuses to give in, decides to tell the unacceptable story: the unfillable void, the absence of loved ones, the unanswered questions and the suffocating silence. After 5 years, absence has her living in a limbo that gives way to desire, hope and the struggle to find her 9-year old son Brandon and her husband, alive. This hauntingly beautiful short film illuminates the way disappearance affects women, and broadens our awareness on disappearance and its social consequences in Mexico and Central America.

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The Room of Bones (El Cuarto de los Huesos)

THE ROOM OF BONES follows the passage of four mothers in the Institute for Legal Medicine as they search for their children’s remains in the midst of three decades of social violence in El Salvador. Across Mexico and Central America, the last twenty years have been plagued by a meteoric and troubling rise in desaparecidos, or missing persons. Mass murder has become all too common, and the identity of the perpetrators remains unknown as the relationship between governments, gangs, and other criminal organizations is shrouded in mystery. As civil and legal systems have failed to thoroughly investigate the crisis, families of victims are left to seek closure and justice on their own. Salvadoran filmmaker Marcela Zamora profiles a group of forensic anthropologists in her home country tasked with the noble but gruesome work of unearthing human remains and matching them with names of desaparecidos. The result is a harrowing portrait of a region in crisis.

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Birth on the Border

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