Filmmaking: My lifelong vocation as an artist
Filmmaking has been my lifelong vocation as an artist navigating through Super 8,
16mm, video and digital technologies. A life journey, starting in Cuba, then Miami,
California, Europe and Latin America, has influenced my development as a creative
documentary storyteller. Through my lens and independent voice, I aim to challenge
viewers’ curiosity and stimulate personal reflection.
Back in Miami, in 2016 I founded Emilia Productions Miami, a family owned production company. Now, as I ponder, on my artistic and professional growth during the golden years of my career, I focus on independent films that explore the evolution of my Cuban-American experience. Films that deal with shared memories and personal
history, and use inward exploration narratives with rich historical and anecdotal details.
Stories about immigration and cultural assimilation, themes that resonate with Miami’s
global community.
In 2018 I released Emilia, an untold Cuban-American Story. It was followed by A Coach for Inclusion: The Ani Perez Story and Coaching People with Special Needs in 2020 with Miami‐Dade Arts Support (MAS) Grants Program. Carmelina: Memories of a Generation premiered in 2021 and An Interview with Ada Ferrer, Pulitzer Prize in History in 2022. Embargoed: Reclaiming Memories, my current work-in-progress, is based on footage shot on a recent trip to Cuba.
My filmmaking career began in California with my first award-winning short, L’Esprit (5’-16mm-1979) San Francisco Emerging Film Artists Showcase. My next film, Exilio/Exile (30’-16mm-1985), shot in Miami, Cuba and San Francisco, was the first independent Cuban-American documentary selected by New York’s WNET-13 Independent Focus and national PBS broadcast. My video master’s thesis, Gypsies Today (20’-Super 8-1987) took me to Spain. As a visual anthropologist-in-residence funded by the Granada Provincial Council, I continued making ethnographic films in Spain. It followed with contracts with the European Union’s MEDIA Program for audiovisual development, workshops with Spanish universities and the European Documentary Network. My European experience culminated in London with the series The Cuban-Spanish-American War of 1898 funded by Discovery Networks, History Channel and Canal+ Spain (2×50’-Video-1998).
Now, as I ponder on my artistic and professional growth during the golden years of my career, I focus on independent films that explore the evolution of my Cuban-American experience.
- Luis perez Tolon
Returning to Miami as Director of Production and Development for Discovery Channel Latin America/Iberia I mentored emerging Spanish and Latin American filmmakers to produce documentaries for Discovery Channel, and more recently producing videos with Miami-Dade College film students, funded by the US Department of Education.
My body of work has been recognized internationally and my independent films made in California, Spain and more recently in Miami, are archived at the University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection.
SELECTED WORK
With the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners.