About Us
Jaime Chavez
Jaime Chavez is a native New Mexican Poet, community organizer, and filmmaker, who resides in the Manzano Mountains, east of Albuquerque. He is completing a collection of poems for publication, (2017) entitled 1 Cosmic Cycle. He is published in a number of New Mexico Anthologies and has served as a Poet del Pueblo in his community historically, to preserve New Mexico's culture and way of life. Every year he organizes the Day of the Dead celebration in local theaters with cutting edge poets, musicians, and artists. He just wrote and directed a film entitled Las Acequias, Lifeblood of New Mexico a 7 Caves, Windows of Aztlan Production.
Emanuel Martinez
Born in Denver, Colorado, Emanuel Martinez began his artistic pursuits as a means of escape from an oppressive childhood. As a forerunner of the contemporary mural movement that began in the late 60's, Emanuel worked in the civil rights movement with Cesar Chavez and other prominent leaders. Three of the art works he did in that era are now in the permanent collection of The Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.
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The work of this prolific, highly versatile artist has won him numerous awards: including the Colorado Governors Award For Excellence in the Arts(1985), the Denver Mayors Award for Excellence in the Arts(1995) and the Denver Civil Rights award in 2001. Andrew Connors, a former curator at the National Museum of American Art states in a published book on Emanuel's work; "As an educator and community activist, Martinez has especially helped young people find ways to make their voices heard. We can all find parts of ourselves of our dreams in his artwork because he recreates the triumphs of the individual and at the same time affirms a collective identity in his murals, paintings, prints and sculptures. As an artist Emanuel acts locally with a significance that is national."
Daniel Schreck
Daniel Wells Schreck has been in the foundation business since 1989-present. He has been a board member, 1974-present, and past President of the Abelard Foundation, 2006-2009. He was introduced to the Funding Exchange by Saquaro board member, Teresa Juarez, where Ray Santiago was program officer to his donor-advised fund, 1990.
Daniel Wells Schreck was a very-actively participating member of NNG (National Network of Grantmakers) and was on the conference planning committee for the Albuquerque conference of 1995, where NNG's first indigenous peoples' day occurred, an idea initiated by Ingrid Washinawatok, although Schreck had a list of fifty groups that needed to participate in his hand when Ingrid proposed the idea.
Schreck first met PDF ED Paul Haible at a Big Mountain prayer vigil in honor of MLK's birthday, at Teddy Begay's hogan, in 1990.
Schreck is a co-founder of the Teh-luh-lah Children's Healing and Learning Center in Chimayo, NM with his companera, Teresa Juarez. They are also operating a family farm.
PDF board member Iva Kaufman is a former NNG colleague. Ali El-Issa, as well, is a co-producer of "The St. Patrick's Battalion" DVD with Daniel. Lori Goodman, Teresa Juarez, and previous grantee, Mildred McClain, of Savannah, GA, went to Paris last year for COP 21. Daniel, also, visited the exhibit of surrealist art at the Pompidou Center, especially the Andre Breton display of his library. McClain and Goodman oversaw the renewal of the Schreck/Juarez wedding vows on the Isis (lovers) bridge behind Notre Dame Cathedral with the bouquet being thrown into the Seine.
Schreck continues his work with PDF with his donor-advised, The Aztlan Fund, which supports work in indigenous country, and tries to, at least at a seed level, to continue the work of the Paul Robeson Fund for Film and Media at the Funding Exchange. The late Saul Landau was very instrumental in mentoring Daniel on the idea of becoming an executive producer, and to fund indigenous people to retain their intellectual property rights by filming their own cultural material.
Gabriel Baca
A New Mexico-born filmmaker, Gabriel became a boom operator at age 15, but his first introduction to film came earlier during the production of Blood In Blood Out (Hollywood Pictures, 1993). His father, Jimmy Santiago Baca, the writer and executive producer of the film, brought Gabriel on-set, planting the seed of his future endeavors.
At 17, Gabriel started taking criminal justice and filmmaking courses and soon after began filming, editing, writing and producing documentaries. Gabriel’s credits include: Moving the River Back Home, Lost Voices, A Place to Stand, Las Acequias and more. In addition to documentary work, he has directed and produced internationally viewed music videos and artistic shorts on shoestring budgets. In 2008, he became a member of the West Coast 700 Editors Guild as an assistant editor.
David Luis Leal Cortez
David Luis Leal Cortez. David is a writer, filmmaker and former political operative, who has worked on local, state, and national campaigns in northern New Mexico. He is from the Washington, DC area and graduated from the College of Santa Fe in Moving Image Arts. He has worked with art collectives like American Dust and Meow Wolf. David is a contributor to LiveTaos.com and The New Mexico Inquisition, New Mexico’s only source of political satire.
He directed his first feature length documentary, Drilling Mora County, about the first county in the US to ban fracking in 2017 with support from the Max and Anna Levinson Foundation and the Mora County Economic Development Corporation.
He is currently producing Successful Outlaw about biker builder and platero, Pepe Rochon. He continues to cover local and national issues with short video reports.
Recent interview with David Luis Leal Cortez on Santa Fe’s KSFR Cinema Scope with Stu Goswick. The show reports on New Mexico based filmmakers. http://cinemascope.libsyn.com/cinemascope-march-10-2017-segment-1-0
News coverage of Drilling Mora County.
http://www.taosnews.com/stories/to-frack-or-not-to-frack,46043
https://www.abqjournal.com/1128012/small-village-hip-to-whats-going-on.html