REEL
RASQUACHE
2005 CAREER ACHIEVER
MOCTESUMA ESPARZA
Moctesuma Esparza, President and CEO of several companies, including Esparza/Katz Productions, Buenavision Telecommunications, Inc. and Maya Cinemas North America Incorporated and Co-founder of Sundance Institute, is an award-winning filmmaker, producer, entertainment executive and entrepreneur, well known for his contribution to the movie industry and his commitment to providing access and opportunities for Latinos in Hollywood. For more than twenty years, Esparza has maintained his commitment to the Latino community from his first film Only Once in a Lifetime (1979) to one of his best-known films, Selena (1997). He has won more than 200 awards, including an Emmy for Cinco Vidas (1973) and an Academy Award nomination for Agueda Martinez-Our People, Our Country (1977). Born and raised in Los Angeles, Esparza has not forgotten his humble beginnings and is dedicated to giving back to his community. Esparza's father, Francisco, came to the United States from Jalisco, Mexico in 1918 during the Mexican Revolution and worked as a farm laborer and railroad hand from Texas to Utah to California where he settled in Los Angeles. Esparza grew up with a strong sense of social justice and remembers the education, principles and values he learned from his father, and incorporated them in his lessons for his own children and all American Latino youth. As a UCLA student in the late 1960's, Moctesuma Esparza played an active role in the student youth movement. He was a founder of the student organization MEChA, and leader in the famous Chicano Student Walkouts of 1968 for which he and twelve others were arrested. He was also present with a film crew at the August 1970 National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War. The footage he shot there eventually was incorporated into the film Requiem 29 (1970). Mr. Esparza received both a B.A. and M.F.A. in Theater Arts-Motion Pictures from UCLA. As an entrepreneur, Esparza acquired the franchise for the first all-Latino-owned cable company, Buenavision Cable TV in East L.A., which he built and operated. Today, in addition to producing films he has also established a chain of movie theatre complexes, called Maya Cinemas. Currently in development is The Cesar Chavez Story, written and directed by Luis Valdez for Warner Bros.
Reel
Rasquache honors Moctesuma Esparza's stellar contributions to U.S. media
by presenting him the 2005 Career Achiever Award. The Career Achiever
Award honors one whose body of work is not only prolific but also a national
treasure, a career that embodies the tremendous scope and rich diversity
of Latino experience and historical contributions in the U.S. Moctesuma
Esparza's commitment toward creating a place of dignity and respect in
U.S. media for the voices of Latino communities spans a tremendous wealth
of achievements - including his earliest work in the late 60's with Pacifica
radio, classic 70's works of independent Chicano documentary Requiem 29
and Cinco Vides, Children's Television Workshop's Sesame Street, Public
Broadcasting Service documentaries and The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1994)
for the legendary American Playhouse series, cable productions like TNT's
Gettysburg (1995) and Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999), and Hollywood
works like Only Once in a Lifetime (1978), The Milagro Beanfield War (1988),
Selena (1997), The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca (1997), and Price of
Glory (2000). Throughout his work, he raises the bar for the U.S. entertainment
industry by exemplifying Latina/o and other representations of color that
are intelligent and multi-dimensional. Consistently, the body of Moctesuma
Esparza's works epitomizes the highest and most profound functions of
media - to educate, to empower, to democratize.
Moctesuma Esparza