Contact & Bios
Address (for regular postal service) (para correo regular)
PO BOX 990668
Boston, MA 02199-0668
Physical Address (for UPS, Fedex, DHL, etc.)
Direccion Fisica (para UPS, Fedex, DHL y demás couriers):
20 Orchard St.
Cambridge 02140
Phone 617.599.4120
The people behind BLIFF:
Jose Barriga
Festival Director - Founder
E-mail: jbarriga@bliff.org
Jose arrived in Boston from Los Angeles in 2001 with the crazy idea of enjoying the Boston weather. Back then he founded BLIFF with a $2,000 budget, a group of volunteers, the support of the city of Cambridge and generous in-kind sponsors. He is a social psychologist by training and specializes in Latino media in the U.S. He has worked in Los Angeles with Telemundo, Fox Latin America, La Opinion newspaper, and Enigma Entertainment in different senior management positions in marketing and the Los Angeles US Hispanic TV industry. He has attended: Universidad Ricardo Palma (Lima), UCLA and Armando Robles Godoy Filmmaking School. In his spare time he is a marketing and video production consultant that specializes in the US Latino market and is enrolled in a Masters of Science in Regulatory Affairs-Drugs Biologics & Medical Devices program at Northeastern University.
Erin Scheffler
Programming Director
E-mail: escheffler@bliff.org
Erin, a Mid-western gal at heart, claims to have no accent although she does exude a mid-west charm and friendliness. She relocated to Boston in 2002 after receiving a B.A. in Organizational Behavior and Psych from the University of Michigan. After five years working at Harvard Business School in management, a couple of countries traveled and career changes later, she is now a practicing RN at Massachusetts General Hospital pursuing a Nurse Practitioner’s Master degree with an interest in Public Health. Throughout all of life’s changes and adventures, she has always maintained a love for film, music, euchre, travel, and meeting new people. Erin is looking forward to improving her Spanish, and engaging, and working with the BLIFF community.
Danielle Oliveira
Volunteer Coordinator
E-mail: doliveira@bliff.org
South by north and a gypsy-like childhood landed Danielle in Boston, MA in fall 2003. Her aspirations led her to Berklee College of Music and is currently finishing up within the Music Business major with a track in Management. Through the last 4 years her interests in latin music, film and culture have grown exponentially as well as perfecting the spanish language. Current projects include Clandestino a latin indie-rock dance party as well as independent consulting with artists and bands. She has strong-held beliefs in the power of music and media in a positive and uplifiting context. Keeping an open mind and ear is something she strives to live by. Look for more to come in the near future.
Eva Perez Soler
Communications - Online Marketing
E-mail: eperez@bliff.org
A native of Valencia, Spain, Eva Perez Soler moved to Boston for love in October 2007. She never left the city. After working in international media in and around Latin America, Eva studied International Marketing at BU. She currently works at LASPAU: Academic and Professional Programs for the Americas, helping Latin American students obtain placements in US and European universities. Her passion for films, documentaries, and people connected her with the BLIFF community three years ago.
Carmen Oquendo-Villar
Villar LGBT Liason, Creator of the LGBT BLIFF Film
Series
Carmen Oquendo-Villar (Harvard Ph.D) is a filmmaker and film/media scholar. She is the Jacob Javits Fellow at New York University’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, where she serves as researcher and film curator and at the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television in Tisch School of the Arts, where she is continuing her filmmaking training. She has been chosen by Cinema Tropical as one of the 30 leading New York-based film professionals (programmers, distributors, film critics, scholars, journalists, etc.) working on Latin American cinema today. She has published academic articles on diverse cultural fields including film, narrative, performance studies, media and politics, and gender and sexuality. Her films (WWW.OQUENDOVILLAR.COM) focus on issues of gender and sexuality. She is currently working on The Needle (finalist HBO Documentary Competition), a verité documentary film about beauty ideals and practices amongst the Puerto Rican transgender community. She has served for the past 7 years as part of the Boston Latino International Film Festival’s curatorial team, where she created the Latin@ LGBT Film Series.
Wanda Droz
"Hospitality Coordinator"
E-mail: wdroz@bliff.org
Wanda was born and raised in Boston of Puerto Rican parents. She has worked in Sales and Marketing for over 10 years most recently as a Sales Analyst at Forrester Research. She is an avid fan of Foreign and Independent films especially from Spain and South America.
Yvonne Ng
"Hospitality Coordinator"
E-mail: yng@bliff.org
Yvonne Ng is thrilled to be volunteering at the 8th Annual BLIFF. She is a Boston native with roots in China and Colombia. She enjoys films that voice their inimitable truths and compel known and unknown emotional responses.
David Miller
Technical Director
Festival Volunteers:
- Damiana Diaz-Reck
- Edwina Portocarrero
- Monica Toledo
- Katherine Martinez
- Tom McGregor
- Alyssa Vangeli
- Christine Lamas
- Iris Seri
- Javier De Taboada
- Amat Y Leon
- Luis Cardet
- Jose Ponce
- Emma Piper-Burket
- Mircia Leguizamo
- Yair Fuxman
- Carmen Alvarez
- Julie Rivera
- Nelida Nassar
- Sendi Kalaora
- Aurelie Behar
- Janet Barriga
- Patrick Guerrero
- Tom Szekely
- Mariam Fazlollahi
- Saint-Cric
- Matt Weinberg
- Monika Navarro
- Giovanni Caceres
- Danielle Porter
- Eunice Pedrosa
- Nassim Memon
- Mauren Henrikson
- Amy Morse
