Ileana D. Vasquez

An award winning auto-didactic writer, director, producer, Ileana D Vasquez of French, Spanish and German ancestry was born in Santiago, Dominican Republic. At a young age, she moved to New York City with her family. She obtained a Bachelors of Fine Arts from UCLA where she began pre-medical studies and later transitioned to pursue the arts. She has been published in the UCLA Art Journal and studied with world renowned artists Paul McCarthy, Chris Burns, Roger Herman, Barbara Drucker, George Herms, and interned with film director Stanley Kramer, and recently shadowed Director Betty Thomas during the filming of Grace and Frankie starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. She has studied acting in Los Angeles with Rachel Rosenthal (improvisation and experimental theater), the San Diego Actor's Studio, Acting International and Le Concour du Cour Florent in Paris, France. Ileana is also an avid photographer - exhibited in the "Women and Architecture Show" at Artimide Gallery, at Mithun Architects and Ouch My Eye Gallery and a solo show at Patricia Cameron Gallery in Seattle. Ileana's ideas and stories stem from her dreams, her environment, nature, life experience, daydreaming, art, reading and dance. She is an auto-didactic filmmaker influenced by the films and perspectives of Directors such as Kubrick, Fellini, Jacques Cocteau, Stanley Kramer, Truffaut, Bunuel, Polanski, Jane Campion, Tarkovsky, the Czech New Wave (Vera Chytilova), Maya Deren and Kieslowsky. Ms. Vasquez is greatly influenced by the work of photographers, Sara Moon, Mario Giacomelli, Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, and the cinematography of Nestor Almendros, Vittorio Storraro, Pin Bing Lee, Christopher Doyle and Guillermo Navarro. Ileana has won a Gold Aurora Award and a Bronze Telly Award for Achievement in Directing a Women In Film, Los Angeles PSA called Finding Sahara as well as an Accolade Award of Merit for Executive Producing the short, Of Yesterday and Tomorrow. She is presently set to direct an international feature, Perfidious. She has also written numerous other screenplays that she will direct including a Virtual Reality project called Gynaika among a variety of others.