Sylvia Morales
Biography
Sylvia Morales (born 1943 in Phoenix, Arizona) is an American film director, writer, producer, and editor. Morales is recognized as one of the first female Mexican-American filmmakers. Morales has won multiple awards for her documentaries, which portray various aspects of Hispanic American society and culture, including the farm workers struggle, Chicana feminism, and the music of Los Lobos. While the majority of her work is in the documentary film genre, Morales has also done work for television. In addition, she has published essays and photographs on Latina and feminist issues. She has lectured and taught at universities throughout Southern California.
Known For & Full Filmography4 Titles
Movie - 1973, 2h 15m • as Angel
A woman who works in a night club starts having obsessive thoughts, beginning to lose her hold on reality.
Movie - 2019, 2h 15m • as Self (archive footage)
Remembers an artist in the form of a somnambulistic fantasy: A filmmaker faces increasing challenges as she tries, decades later, to complete Dominican filmmaker Jean-Louis Jorge’s unfinished work.
Movie - 1979, 2h 15m • as Chic Woman
This film is a scrambled narrative that illustrates, in soap opera fashion, life of artists in Lower Manhattan and at the same time dramatizes questions about the nature of filmic representation. Split decision is a boxing term used when the judges divide their votes in finding a winner. In this case the fight is between the two heroes of the film who are seen intermittently in a bar, negotiating a pick-up, and at home, breaking up in a domestic quarrel. The fight is also in the telling, between modes of conventional representation and modes of radical representation - between conventional continuity editing, and abstraction created through computer generated grids. The film features an appearance by Carolee Schneemann and digital imaging from before the era of personal computers.
Movie - 1978, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An exploration of social schizophrenia in which terrorists consult their mothers before planting bombs, and the head of the New York City bomb squad succumbs to his dominatrix.