Anayansi Prado

An award-winning documentary filmmaker and instructor, Anayansi Prado was born in Panama and moved to the United States as a teenager. She attended Boston University where she received a B.A. in Film. She directed and produced the award-winning documentaries Maid in America (2004) about Latina domestic workers in LA; Children in No Man's Land (2008) about unaccompanied minors crossing the US/Mexico border; and Paraiso for Sale (2011) about American retirees moving to Panama -- all which were broadcast nationally on PBS. Anayansi is a Rockefeller Media Fellow and is a Creative Capital Artist and has received support for her work from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Ford Foundation, Tribeca Film Institute and other funders. As an instructor Ms. Prado works on a regular basis with the State Department's Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs to bring documentary filmmaking production and photography training to aspiring filmmakers in developing countries. Anayansi has been a film expert with the Documentary Film Showcase and the American Film Showcase since 2009. Through this state department programs, she's taught production, fundraising and grant-writing workshops in China, Mozambique, Burma (Myanmar), Angola, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Bosnia, Singapore, Panama and Paraguay. Anayansi has also taught as an Adjunct Professor at California State University, Northridge, Journalism Department, and at Chapman University's Dodge School of Film & Media Arts. In 2008, Anayansi Prado co-founded Impacto Project, a non-profit organization geared to bringing visual arts and digital media training to youth in developing countries as tools for empowerment and archival of their own cultures. Ms. Prado is working on her fourth independent production, The Unafraid, a documentary about undocumented students in Georgia which has banned them from attending the state's top public universities. When not traveling for work or fun, Anayansi calls Los Angeles, CA home.