Meet the Team

  • Megan Martinez Goltz

    Director

    Working to eliminate erasure of indigenous traditions and practices, I share stories to promote collective and individual healing in ways that also celebrate queerness. I am passionate about learning ancestral ways of cultivating the earth for food and medicine and weaving these practices into the stories I share.

    Megan Martinez Goltz

  • Alex Santana

    Producer

    Through audio stories and documentary portraits, Alex leverages his decade of experience as a video and media professional to preserve the unique narratives of people and their families. Alex believes every personal legacy has value.

    Memoria Media Productions

  • Helen Aldana

    Creative Producer

    I am an abuelita-in-training and a hard worker learning to foster our collective vision of home. In practice, I support communities in strengthening their trust, sharing their stories, tending their roots, and building their future.

    Helen Aldana

  • Eugenia Renteria

    Director of Photography

    Eugenia Renteria is a filmmaker and educator. Born and raised in a rural community in Zacatecas, Mexico, she moved to California when she was 12 years old. Her work has been showcased at San Diego Latino Film Festival, San Francisco Latino Film Festival, Official Latino, and ShortsMexico. She was an inaugural fellow for the Watsonville Film Festival’s Cine Se Puede Fellowship and is an inaugural PBS Ignite Mentorship Program mentee. Eugenia is the co-founder and executive director of Inspira Studios.

    Inspira Studios

  • Marcus Cisneros

    Editor

    Marcus is a film editor, motion designer and post production specialist born and raised on the California central coast. He has a passion for storytelling and technology with different mediums. He wholeheartedly believe in redefining the perception of Mexican Americans and the people of color in genre storytelling and believes in blending a little bit of medicine into entertainment.

    Marcus Cisneros

  • Brenda Ávila Hanna

    Creative Consultant

    Brenda Ávila-Hanna is filmmaker and educator from Mexico City who has lived in the CA Central Coast for over a decade. Her work has been showcased at HotDocs, Lakino Berlin, PBS, Fusion Network and more. Brenda is a current Research Fellow at UCSC's Film & Digital Media Department, where she also received an MA in Social Documentation in 2013. She recently joined the Watsonville Film Festival team part-time as Artist Development lead for the festival’s Cine Se Puede filmmaking fellowship.

    Brenda Ávila-Hanna

  • Tizoc Ramirez-Marquez

    Audio Engineer

  • Juan Palomino

    Grip and Lighting

  • Isabel Contreras

    Art Director

Community Partners

  • Senderos

    Culture Bearer

    Fe Silva Robles is and Dr. Nereida Robles Vásquez are Indigenous women from Santiago Laxopa, a village in the Sierra Norte mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, where they grew up speaking Zapotec. After immigrating to the California and seeing that Latino immigrant youth and their families have huge challenges in staying connected to their culture, these sisters co-founded Senderos in 2001. The mission of Senderos is to create pathways to success with the Latinx community by sharing traditional cultural arts and by fostering educational opportunities.

  • Getting to the Root

    Cultural Bearer

    Lizette Ohxochitl, is the Spiritual Lead and Founder of Getting To The Root, a collective of individuals and elders from South to North America who are in service to regenerative and restorative ways of living on our Mother Earth by providing hands on support to indigenous communities. Part of the spiritual activism and revival that GRT does is through prayer in traditional indigenous ceremonies, rites of passage, classes/workshops, and events to for people looking for self-empowerment, purpose, & wholeness in a safe and supportive space.

  • Watsonville Film Festival

    Funder

    Hosted by Watsonville Film Festival, Cine Se Puede is a Fellowship supporting emerging Latinx filmmakers from Santa Cruz County and Pájaro Valley. The fellowship assists with funding, mentorship and pitch sessions with industry specialists to help filmmakers and their projects reach the next level of their careers.

  • Filmmakers Collaborative SF

    Funder

    Filmmakers Collaborative SF and Re-Present Media are collaborating to present the For Us, By Us Filmmaker Incubator, a six month intensive to support a diverse cohort of seven local documentary filmmakers who are telling personal stories from underrepresented communities in the Bay Area. From March-August 2023, the filmmakers will participate in workshops, receive mentoring, and be given stipends to strategically use for their films.