practice

I make films that feel human and leave room for hope.

For twenty-five years, I've worked at the intersection of cultural identity, music, and human rights — from a documentary about the Barrios Altos massacre in Peru that aired on national television after the fall of the Fujimori dictatorship, to a dozen short films about contemporary art commissioned by MASS MoCA, to Building Youth Power: Pa'lante's Homecoming and South Holyoke Homes, two documentary films about the community I currently live in.

Between 2015 and 2019, I produced and directed The New Regulars, a hyperlocal media platform in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that used documentary film, community screenings, and neighborhood events to address gentrification and amplify local voices — supported by the New York Foundation for the Arts and the borough of Brooklyn.

Earlier in my career, I produced TV documentary films for Media Networks Latin America on the intersection of music and cultural identity, including pieces on Salsa in Cali and Vallenato in Colombia. My institutional work includes the Smith College Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, The Clark Art Institute, and the Williams College Museum of Art.

I'm based in Western Massachusetts, working in English and Spanish, in communities and institutions alike. Everything I make — regardless of scale or subject — is built on the same belief: that the most human stories are also the most necessary ones.

- Luis Salazar