PRINCIPALS
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Eve A. Ma, Producer-Director, is a former history professor turned filmmaker. She loves music, dance, and all of the arts and in defense of the arts, she likes to point out that we don’t admire Paris for its freeway system.
Ma wants to use film to help us understand people and cultures different from our own, with the hope that with understanding comes tolerance. In addition, she thinks it’s good to be able to imagine solutions to problems from a perspective different from the one we know best.
Plus of course, she makes her films because she hopes they will entertain and inspire. SO – enjoy!
Antonio de la Malena is the narrator of Flamenco: the Land Is Still Fertile (as seen on national PBS). He is also the film’s associate director, and is one of its 15-odd soloists. Plus he is the star of our drama, Domino: Caught in the Crisis.
Malena has spent his life on stage as a world-touring flamenco singer, and. often acts as stage director of major flamenco shows. A professional singer since the age of 8, he is also a proud gitano (Spanish Gypsy) from Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, known as part of the “cradle of flamenco”.
He has several music albums to his name, and often tours with the company of dancer María del Mar Moreno.
Ricardo Peña is the lead drummer and head of an Aztec group in the San Francisco Bay Area. Here he is in front of his shop.
Orignally from ??? in central Mexico, our documentary Ricardo Peña and the Aztec Dancers (Ricardo Peña, los danzantes aztecas y la herencia indígena) is largely based on an interview with him. To provide context, the film also contains shots of an Aztec ceremony led by him, and some of him and his group participating in San Francisco’s annual Carnavál.
… more later
Rubén Guzmán is one of two artists featured in Quetzalcoatl & the Magic Flute of Fire (Quetzalcoatl y la flauta máginca del fuego).
more later
Francisco Pérez immigrated with his mother and cousin from Spain to Hawaii when he was about five years old. He and his family were part of a group of immigrants, contract laborers brought over from Spain to work on Hawaii’s sugar cane and pineapple plantations. Francisco’s memories of this are vivid and fascinating.
When he was seven or eight years old, he was put to work in the fields. But after his mother’s labor contract was up, they moved to Honolulu and….
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Our documentary tells the story of this immigration through Francisco’s eyes and through the eyes of the now-elderly descendants of other original Spanish immigrants. From their beginnings as illiterate, poor, Spanish-speaking peasants, most of their descendants are now middle-class English-speaking American citizens who live in California.
Lalo Izquierdo was a dancer, choreographer, percussionist, and folklorist of his Afro-Peruvian community. He is also one of the stars of two of our documentaries: Masters of Rhythm: the Afro-Peruvian Way (as seen on national PBS) and A Zest for Life: Afro-Peruvian Rhythms, a Source of Latin Jazz.
He passed away in 2022 but not before representing Peru in the Olympic Games in Mexico City and teaching Afro-Peruvian cajón and culture throughout Latin America, in Europe, and in North America.
One of the founders of Perú Negro, a seminal group that was part of the modern cultural flowering of the Afro-Peruvian community, he was always smiling. and was much loved by his many students. He founded a cultural center in San Luis, near Lima (Peru) and spent his life working to preserve and revitalize his culture.
Peta Robles, Lalo Izquierdo’s niece, is a wonderful percussionist in her own right, specializing in the cajón but also excellent in Afro-Peruvian zapateo footwork, the cajita, and the qujada de burro (or donkey’s jawbone). She is the star of From Box to Cajón: Peta’s Heritage (in production; expected completion Jan. 2025).
Others who appear in the fiom are Huevito, Lalo Izquierdo, and John Santos. ….more later
