Key Personnel

Producer/Writer Mark Eisner is a writer, editor and scholar of Latin American literature and history. He is Red Poppy's President and acting Executive Director. In 2004, he edited The Essential Neruda, a collection of Pablo Neruda’s poetry that was published by City Lights. The bi-lingual edition features translations by Eisner and others, including Robert Hass, Alastair Reid and Jack Hirschman. It is the bestselling edition of Neruda translations. Eisner received his Master’s degree in Latin American Studies from Stanford University, and his Bachelor of Arts with High Honors in English/Creative Writing and Political Science from the University of Michigan. He spent several years backpacking and working throughout Latin America, and later received a fellowship to study at Stanford’s Center for Latin American Studies. In 2002, he was awarded a grant by Stanford’s Oversees Studies Program to conduct research in Chile, and continued his work as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Center for Latin American Studies. Eisner’s translations were included in Farrar, Strauss & Giroux’s The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. On July 12, 2004, on what would have been Neruda’s 100th birthday, Eisner was interviewed by NPR’s Morning Edition and read Neruda’s poetry to millions. In 2005, he received a contract from W.W. Norton to write a groundbreaking exploration of the life, times, and poetry of the legendary Chilean author and Nobel Laureate. The book’s expected release date is Fall 2009.
Mark is now on Facebook and MySpace.

Producer/Director/Editor Carlos Bolado brings the ideal passion, creativity, and expertise to make our film the lyrical, compelling, powerful, and important art for which we are striving. Starting in high school, Neruda’s poetry and political commitment have been a key influence on the development of Carlos’ creativity and drive. He holds an ardent love for the bard.

Carlos directed and edited Promises, a documentary about Israeli and Palestinian children. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for best feature documentary of 2002, and won twelve other awards, including two Emmys and the Audience Awards for Best Documentary at the San Francisco, São Paulo, and Rotterdam International Film Festival. Carlos has been a vital talent in the new Mexican film movement. He edited Like Water for Chocolate, and was an advising editor on Amores Perros (Love’s a Bitch), starring Gael García Bernal.

The first feature that he directed and produced himself, Bajo California, won 7 Ariels, Mexico’s highest cinematic award, including Best Picture of 1999.

Carlos was born in Veracruz, Mexico in 1964.  He grew up in Mexico City listening to his grandmother’s stories and was fascinated by cliff-hanging cinema, watching the old black & white Mexican movies and US serials. Carlos then began to dream of making his own films.  He studied at Mexico’s National Film School (CUEC). In 1993, he won a young artist scholarship from the National Council for Culture and the Arts. 

His latest film Solo Dios Sabe, was shown in Sundance 2006 and many festivals worldwide and will be released in the winter of 2007 by Palm Pictures. His next feature has Alec Baldwin signed for a lead role.

Carlos has also served on many international juries, including the 2007 Sundance Festival, the 2006 Miami Film Festial, and for the Rockefeller Foundation in 2007. He was a creative advisor for the Sundance Institute’s 2006 Storytelling Lab.

Producer Lily Gálvez is a Chilean documentary filmmaker. Fleeing her country after Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup, Gálvez began her career in exile in Eastern Europe. From 1974-76, she worked in the legendary state film studios of East Germany, and later as an editor and producer at Breme Studios, Bulgaria. She returned to Chile in 1987 when the dictatorship ended, and has produced numerous documentaries, including a biography of Neruda’s second wife, Delia del Carril, and the Discovery Channel program “Identidades.” Many of her projects focus on the role of women today in Chile’s social and political life. She is currently the head of the Film Department at Universidad ARCIS in Santiago. Gálvez handled most of the production for our month of shooting in Chile, arranging most of the interviews through her personal friendships and contacts.

Composer/Performer Claudio Durán (aka Quique Cruz) has performed, taught and recorded Latin American music since the age of fourteen. A native of Chile, Durán grew up near Isla Negra and remembers Pablo Neruda’s frequent visits to read poetry at his school. In 2003 he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant to compose a suite After the Fire, Water. In 2002, Quique received the Oshita Composer Fellowship from the Djerassi Foundation. In 1999-2000, he was a Social Science Research Council Fellow working on issues of memory, violence and exile, and in 2001 he received a fellowship from the Ford Foundation to research and write about aesthetics and political violence. Durán’s memoir The Autobiography of an Ex-Chess Player was recently published in Chile, and his forthcoming book Villa Grimaldi: Archeology of Memory was awarded the Book Prize by FONDART, the Chilean National Endowment for the Arts. A documentary film based on the book is currently being made co-directed and produced by Oscar nominee Marilyn Mulford. Funded by Latino Public Broadcasting and ITVS. Durán earned a Master’s degree in Latin American Studies from Stanford University where he is presently a Ph.D. candidate in Modern Thought and Literature. On stage, Durán has joined Jackson Browne, Mimi Fariña, Pete Seeger, Jorge Strunz, and Sting, among others.

Narrator Suzanne Vega is a singer/performer who is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant songwriters of her generation. Suzanne emerged as a leading figure of the folk-music revival of the early 1980’s when, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, she sang contemporary folk songs of her own creation in Greenwich Village clubs. Since the release of her critically acclaimed 1985 debut album, she has performed sold-out concerts in many of the world's best-known venues. With the release of her second album Solitude Standing and the hit single "Luka," Suzanne vaulted to a position of prominence in the world of popular music. She was the host of the Peabody-award winning public radio series American Mavericks, a groundbreaking radio and Internet series produced by American Public Media in association with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas.

Consulting Producer Gail Silva was the primary force behind Film Arts Foundation for over twenty-five years, first as co-director, then executive director and finally president. In 2002, her years of dedication to artistic excellence and advocacy were recognized by the presentation of the California Arts Council’s “Directors Award.” Gail has assisted hundreds of independent filmmakers develop and complete their projects, by advising them on conceptual project development, effective fundraising strategies and then connecting them with potential donors and granting institutions and foundations. She continues to consult on financial strategies and on the marketing and distribution side: analysis of target markets, including selecting the most appropriate festivals and recommending effective distributors for the educational, broadcast and cable networks.

Creative Consultant/Scholar Tina Escaja, Ph.D. is a creative writer and scholar from Zamora, Spain. She has published extensively on gender and 20th/21st Century Spanish and Latin American poetry and fiction. She has just finished editing a major volume, Poesía Hispánica Contemporánea Escrita por Mujeres, forthcoming from Universitas Castellae. Her last book of poetry, Caida Libre (2004), won the Premio Hispanoamericano Dulce María Loynaz. Escaja also works with experimental and multimedia works, including hypertext, and has displayed her art internationally. She is working on her first theatrical piece. Escaja is currently Professor of Spanish Literature and Director of Latin American Studies at the University of Vermont, where she is also a member of the Film Studies Faculty. For more on Tina, visit her website.

Scholar Marjorie Agosín, Ph.D., human rights activist and writer, is a Professor of Spanish at Wellesley College. She has written almost 20 books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and essays. The descendant of Russian and Austrian Jews who perished in the Pogrom and the Holocaust, at the age of 16, her family fled Chile to escape Pinochet’s dictatorship. Agosín has won numerous awards for her human rights work, including the Good Neighbor Award given by the Conference of Christians and Jews and the Jeanette Rankin Award in 1995. That year, she also received two prestigious prizes given to Latino writers: the Letras de Oro prize and the Latino Literature Prize for two collections of poetry. Dear Anne Frank, Agosin’s recent collection of bilingual poems, lets unfolds a remarkable relationship with a teenage Jewish girl who perished in the death camps of Bergen Belsen.

Scholar Jorge Ruffinelli, Ph.D. is a native of Uruguay and Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Stanford University. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on Latin American cinema and is currently completing the first Encyclopedia of Latin American Cinema, for which he wrote two thousand articles. Jorge has been a member of the jury for international literary prizes, including Marcha (Uruguay); Casa de las Américas (La Habana, Cuba); and Premio Internacional Juan Rulfo (Guadalajara, Mexico). He also has been a jury member at the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano (La Habana, Cuba); Festival Internacional de San Sebastian-Donostia (Pais Vasco, Espana); and Festival Internacional de Trieste (Italia). In 1993 he produced a documentary about Augusto Monterroso for which he interviewed major Mexican writers and critics.