A Latino's Journey to America: Are You Who Left or Who You Became?

Описание: The 2024 Diverse Perspectives in Digital Media & Design Speaker Series presents a talk by Juan Paulo Laserna.

As a storyteller one of the most consequential aspects of moving forward is finding your "voice", the subconscious amalgamation of your morality, humor, taste and world vision, encompassing the unique journey that is your identity. As an immigrant, your voice changes because your identity changes, so are you who left or who you're becoming? Why do we choose to tell some stories over others and what does that say about where our voice is heading.

About the Speaker:

Juan Paulo Laserna is a Colombian screenwriter, director and producer. He grew up in Bogotá, Colombia, after which he moved to Beijing, China, to pursue Mandarin Studies at Beijing Language and Culture University. He majored in film directing at the School of Visual Arts in New York and graduated with honors, winning several awards, including best editing, directing and best film for his first feature length project, Las Malas Lenguas. The film would premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival and go on to have a theatrical release in Colombia and on STARZ in the US. His stories utilize magical realism and dark humor to develop contemporary dramas and crime narratives related to immigration. Juan Paulo graduated with honors from the film program at Columbia University. He was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Screenplay Award for his story on the indigenous rehabilitation of the land during the war in Colombia, as well as the Katharina Otto-Bernstein Mentorship Grant for his coming of age film, Not My Name. He is a recipient of the NALIP's Emerging Content Creators Scholarship as well as the SVA Rhodes Family Award - for Outstanding Achievement in Film/Video. Most recently he worked alongside director Alex Garcia Lopez in the Netflix series for One Hundred Years of Solitude.

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About the 2025 Diverse Perspectives in Digital Media & Design Speaker Series:
To paraphrase James Baldwin, nothing can be changed until it is faced. This is certainly true of the inequities that have historically shaped digital media content, fields, and careers. Join UConn’s Digital Media & Design department in welcoming industry professionals, artists, and media scholars from the film, design, cultural, game, and other sectors to discuss how issues of equity manifest in their work, creative processes, and professions, allowing us to reflect on how our own practice can support greater equity, diversity, and inclusion.