Biography

An American filmmaker born in El Salvador, Francisco is Artistic Director of the University of Nevada Las Vegas Department of Film, where he is also a professor. In 2017 he received a Regents' Creative Activities Award Medal from the State of Nevada for his feature-length film Stealing Las Vegas starring Eric Roberts. He holds prestigious teaching awards from UNLV, two Charles Vanda awards for excellence in the arts, and placed 1st for two University Film and Video Association juried screening awards. Francisco served as UNLV Film Department Chair for almost two decades and raised over a million dollars for the program. Aside from filmmaking, his areas of research are: virtual reality, stereoscopy, and emerging technologies.
- IMDb mini biography by: Francisco Menendez

Francisco Menendez began making movies at the age of nine in his native country of El Salvador. In the Spring of 1984, he took a break from his undergraduate work to return to El Salvador as a stringer for "Time" Magazine and a liaison for Jane Wallace of CBS News. In 1985, Menendez won the Dore Schary Award for his documentary "Los Niños: Thinking About Others," about the challenging lives of Mexican children along the U.S. border. Honored as Outstanding Graduate of the year at the University of Puget Sound in 1985, Menendez received his M.F.A. in Film and Video at California Institute of the Arts in 1989.

At Cal Arts, he was a teaching assistant for three years to Oscar-nominated filmmaker Alexander Mackendrick, who served as his mentor. Menendez then worked as a casting assistant for Pagano/Bialy Casting, and ran their office on the 20th Century Fox lot. He also served as Assistant Editor to Kris Malkiewicz for the revised edition of the book "Cinematography." Menendez joined the faculty of UNLV in 1990 and served as the chair of the Department of Film since 1999. At UNLV, he created their production and screenwriting sequences, designed their non-linear lab facilities and began their Professional Film Crew Training Program. His areas of research are narrative theory, new technologies and the restoration of Central American films. In 2000, Menendez was awarded the Rita Deanin Abbey Teacher of the Year. In 2001, his short feature "Medio Tiemp"o won the Showtime Latino Filmmaker Award, airing nationally on the Showtime cable network. Menendez was honored in 2001 with the Trustee Award for his commitment to education and his involvement in film production in the state of Nevada. He screened his HD feature "Primo" at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival.
- IMDb mini biography by: Francisco Menendez