Biography

A current Sundance Institute Fellow, and a past John Simon Memorial Guggenheim grantee, Carmen Oquendo-Villar is a filmmaker and visual artist whose work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and film festivals worldwide. She studied filmmaking at New York University's Graduate Film Program and in the Film Study Center at Harvard University, where she also obtained a Ph.D. in literature. Her work focuses on gender topics and urban culture. She's now working on Todas-Las-Flores, a transmedia documentary that explores Bogotá's red-light district in Santafé, home to a large part of Colombia's transgender community. Through different platforms, including a feature-length documentary, performances, installations, and photographic essays, it tracks how, over the years, the zone has transformed from a family neighborhood of wealthy Jewish immigrants to a migratory end-point for impoverished refugees, ex-paramilitary, and former guerrillas. Through a rich narrative universe, various formats, and converging components, this project seeks to provide a multi-dimensional experience of this unique neighborhood.

She has experience as a director, producer, field producer, impact producer, cinematographer, and still photographer.

Her work received support from the following organizations: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard's Film Study Center, Jacob Javits Fellowship, Fulbright Colombia, International Women's Media Foundation, WGBH, Robert Giard Foundation/(Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York, NALAC (National Association of Latino Arts and Culture), NALIP (National Association of Latino Independent Producers); National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) & Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP).
- IMDb mini biography by: Carmen Oquendo-Villar