Biography
Paul Espinosa is an award-winning Independent Producer/Writer/Director based in San Diego. In 1997, he formed Espinosa Productions as a film and video company specializing in documentary and dramatic films focused on the U.S.-Mexico border region. He served as the Executive Producer for Public Affairs and Ethnic Issues for KPBS-TV (1990-94) and as the Senior Producer and Director of the KPBS Office of Latino Affairs (1980-90), which he created in 1980. Specializing in Latino and U.S.-Mexico border topics, Espinosa has produced, directed, written and hosted numerous programs for PBS.
Espinosa's major national production credits for PBS include: ...and the earth did not swallow him (Producer/Executive Producer-1996), a feature length American Playhouse drama about one year in the life of young Mexican American boy and his migrant farmworker family, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; The U.S.-Mexican War: 1846-1848 (Senior Producer-1997), a three-hour, binational documentary series airing this fall, examining this pivotal event in U.S.-Mexican history; The Hunt for Pancho Villa: American Experience (Producer/Writer-1993), a documentary examining Villa's raid on the U.S. and the American expedition which was sent after him in 1916; 1492 Revisited (Producer/Director-1992), a documentary on a dramatic art exhibit providing a critical perspective on the quincentenary; Los Mineros: American Experience (Writer-1991), the story of Mexican American copper miners' 50-year struggle for justice in Arizona; and The New Tijuana (Producer/Writer-1990), a one-hour documentary portraying the dynamic economic and political changes shaping Tijuana, Mexico.
Other national PBS production credits include: Uneasy Neighbors (Producer/Director/Writer-1990), a profile of escalating tensions between migrant camps and affluent homeowners in San Diego; In the Shadow of the Law (Producer/Writer-1988), a one-hour documentary profiling four families living illegally in the U.S.; The Lemon Grove Incident (Producer/Writer-1986), a docudrama about the nation's first successful legal challenge to school segregation; Ballad of an Unsung Hero (Producer/Writer-1984), a portrait of the colorful life of Pedro J. Gonzalez shown at INPUT '84; and The Trail North (Producer/Writer-1983), a documentary recounting one family's journey north from Mexico, narrated by Martin Sheen.
Espinosa received his B.A. degree from Brown University in Anthropology and his Ph.D. from Stanford University, also in Anthropology, where he specialized in the cultural analysis of television communication. He has received major production funding from many national and state agencies, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Playhouse, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the California Public Broadcasting Commission, the Pacific Mountain Network Program Fund, McDonald's Corporation, and the state humanities councils of California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
Among the awards garnered by Espinosa's programs are seven Emmys; four CINE Golden Eagle awards; two Ohio State Awards; a Golden Mike Award; two Blue Ribbons and one Red Ribbon from the American Film Festival; a national Emmy nomination for News and Documentary achievement; Best of the Festival Awards at the Santa Barbara and Minneapolis International Film Festivals; Best Feature Awards from San Antonio CineFestival and San Diego Filmmakers Showcase; Special Jury Awards from Cairo and Viņa del Mar Chile Film Festivals; top documentary awards from the Houston International Film Festival, San Francisco Broadcast Industry Conference, National Latino Film and Video Festival, and National Educational Film and Video Festival; and major awards from the American Bar Association, the California Teacher's Association, the California School Board Association, the American Civil Liberties Union and National Conference on Christians and Jews.
Espinosa was a founding member of the California Chicano News Media Association (San Diego) and served as the group's President from 1983-86. He served a four year term on the California Council for the Humanities and was one of the first appointees to the City of San Diego's Select Board on Binational Issues. In 1990, he was invited by the Mexican government to participate in "Chicanos 90: Primera Semana de Cine y Video Chicanos," the first major retrospective of Chicano film and video work to appear in Mexico.
Espinosa has been a Grants Reviewer for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Independent Television Service, the California Council for the Humanities, National Public Radio, the National Asian American Telecommunications Association, the California Arts Council and the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture. He has been nominated three times for a Rockefeller Foundation Intercultural Film/Video Fellowship in the Documentary category.
Espinosa's programs form part of university and museum collections around the country and have been widely reviewed in national and regional publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, NPR's "All Things Considered," TV Guide, Daily Variety, Nuestro Magazine, the San Antonio Light, the Houston Post, the El Paso Herald Post, Hispanic Magazine, and recently in a new guide to independent film and video, Mediating History.
Espinosa served as a member of the Documentary Jury for the Ninth Annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, Cuba. He has served on the Board of Governors of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, San Diego; the National Advisory Board of the San Antonio CineFestival; and the Community Media Task Force of the Human Relations Commission of San Diego County.
Espinosa has lectured and screened at many universities and community centers across the country including Stanford, Temple, University of Illinois, University of Texas, Universidad Iberoamericana (Tijuana), Museum of Modern Art in Houston, Guadalupe Cultural Center in San Antonio, and the Universities of California at Irvine, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara and San Diego.