Salvador Carrasco

Salvador Carrasco is a Mexican film director based in Santa Monica, California. He is the writer and director of the highly acclaimed and influential feature film The Other Conquest about the Spanish colonization of Mexico. Carrasco has won numerous film and academic awards, and is currently developing new film projects through his production company, Salvastian Pictures, based in Santa Monica, California, including film adaptations of stories by preeminent writers Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Stephen Graham Jones. Carrasco is a tenured film professor at Santa Monica College, where he is the Head of the Film Production Program, recently featured in Variety magazine. Carrasco has been featured as a guest film director at the CinemadaMare Film Festival in Italy, along with directors Margarethe von Trotta, Paolo Sorrentino, and Krzysztof Zanussi.

Earlier career

Carrasco was born in Mexico City and now resides in Santa Monica, California. He first attended Bard College and then graduated in 1991 with a degree in Film and Television from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, receiving the Founders Day Honors Award. At NYU he wrote and directed three award-winning short films: Alone with His Void, Marblood, and To Fall in Exile. In 1992 Carrasco and producer Alvaro Domingo co-founded Carrasco & Domingo Films, a film production company based in Mexico City and now also in Los Angeles. They also created the Spanish-language cultural magazine, Litoral, which published a wide range of international writers and artists.

The Other Conquest

Carrasco's first feature, The Other Conquest (La Otra Conquista), was distributed by Twentieth Century Fox and became the highest-grossing Mexican film ever at the time of its release. During its run in Los Angeles, The Other Conquest had great box-office success and wide critical acclaim, becoming one of The Los Angeles Times' Top 10 Films of 2000. LA Times' critic Kevin Thomas wrote: "Dazzling, Stupendous, Daring! In his bravura feature debut, Carrasco has created nothing less than a superb cinematic vision." Variety called The Other Conquest "the first 3 million dollar movie that looks like 30!" and in the words of Oscar-Watch's Sasha Stone: "Carrasco ought to emerge as one of the world's best directors, taking his place alongside such uncompromising giants as Martin Scorsese and Akira Kurosawa." The Other Conquest was re-released in US theaters in 2008, accumulating more than 40 rave reviews, and a 90% score with top critics on the Rotten Tomatoes website. The Other Conquest is now available on DVD.

More recent output

Carrasco is currently developing film projects as a writer-director, including adaptations of celebrated literary works by Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Stephen Graham Jones. He has also directed episodic television, including Nickelodeon's hit series comedy, Brothers Garcia. As a writer, Carrasco's essays and poems in both English and Spanish have been published in books, magazines, and newspapers that include The Los Angeles Times' Calendar section and Book Review, His song-cycle Solamente Sola has appeared twice on CDs (Island Records and Urtext) and was described by Fanfare magazine as being "…of a Spanish intensity reminiscent of [Spanish poet] García Lorca" and by The New York Times' Allan Kozinn as "four songs couched in effusive and seductive folk styles... a hauntingly evocative cycle on poems by Salvador Carrasco".

Academic positions

Carrasco is the 2002-2003 recipient of the Moseley Fellowship in Creative Writing at Pomona College. He has taught directing at the University of Southern California; screenwriting at Pomona College; film theory and history at Santa Monica College; and he was the Advanced Directing Course Director at The Los Angeles Film School from 2003-2010. In July 2010 Carrasco was appointed as a tenured film professor at Santa Monica College, where he created a new Associate in Science degree program in Film Production.

As the Head of SMC's Film Production Program, Carrasco teaches both filmmaking and critical studies courses, and mentors award-winning short films as Executive Producer: Solidarity (dir. Dustin Brown), Annabel Lee (dir. Ronja Jansz), Rachel 9000 (dir. Angelo Chavez), (dir. Morgan Peterson), Hurt (dir. Brandon Chang), Cora (dir. Kevin Maxwell), Muñecas (dir. Ozzy Ozuna), Bird (dir. Brittany Barber), Like A Rolling Stone (dir. Daniel Hawley), Shape Shifter (dir. Kelly Thompson), One of These Days (dir. Chris Wilson), Once Upon A Woman (dir. Wayne Hodges), With A Single Leg (dir. Gabriel Santos), and Hinge (dir. Lisa Mayo),as of August 2017. In addition, under Carrasco's leadership the SMC Film Program has co-produced award-winning short films with CinemadaMare in Italy: A Fish Story, Spaghetti Romance, and MU, all of them written & directed by Carrie Finklea.

Solidarity, Cora, and Spaghetti Romance have been screened in competition at the Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival.

Impact Award

On January 10, 2015 Salvador Carrasco was honored at the Aero Theater by the Santa Monica International Film Festival with the "2015 Impact Award" celebrating the local and international educational, economic, and artistic impact of his work at Santa Monica College as Head of the new SMC Film Production Program. Other recipients of the SMFF Impact Award include film directors James Cameron and John Frankenheimer, as well as actor Pierce Brosnan.

Salvador Carrasco was attached to direct The Holy Road, sequel to the film Dances with Wolves, but the project was not realized.

• Solamente Sola, a cycle of four songs on poems by Salvador Carrasco Composed by Samuel Zyman Rachel Rosales, soprano; Mirian Conti, piano (CD - Island Records 7910552)
• Voces de Tierra: Solamente Sola, a cycle of four songs on poems by Salvador Carrasco Composed by Samuel Zyman Irasema Terrazas, soprano; Yleana Bautista, piano (CD - Urtext JBCC068)
• "Recalling María Félix: Frailty, Thy Name Is Not Woman," essay by Salvador Carrasco, published in Los Angeles Times' Calendar section (front page); April 16, 2002.
• "The Mestiza Scheherazade," review by Salvador Carrasco, published in The Los Angeles Times' Book Review section; October 27, 2002.
• "The Invisible Sight," essay by Salvador Carrasco, published in Tom Hayden's "The Zapatista Reader" (Nation Books; ISBN 978-1-56025-335-8)
• "Coca-Cola (Coke) spec commercial," directed by Salvador Carrasco; ©Salvastian Pictures, Inc., 2009.
• "The Twilight Zone: A Piano in the House," directed by Salvador Carrasco; 2010.
• "Santa Monica College's Film Production Program"