Shawna Baca

Shawna Baca got her first taste of filmmaking at the age of six when John Cassavettes rented her uncle's house to make the movie, "A Killing of a Chinese Bookie." Four years later, her uncle lost her at the wrap party for "One From the Heart," where she met Francis Ford Coppola. When he asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she answered confidently: "You." He tried to talk her out of it, but she held her ground. Shawna Baca, founder of 4 Elements Productions, is an award winning filmmaker who was born in East Los Angeles, Ca. and has produced several award winning short films that have garnered recognition at national and international film festivals and showcased around the world. Among other honors, Shawna was selected for prestigious programs such as the Producers Guild of America Diversity Workshop, the Fox Diversity Writers Program, the NBC Diversity Showcase, and the Project Involve Directors Program awarded by Film Independent. In 2007, Shawna was the only person of American Latin descent out of 12,000 filmmakers to be selected for Fox's Reality show "On The Lot," by executive producers Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett. In 2004, she organized the American Latin Film Festival sponsored by Nosotros, which was founded by Ricardo Montalban to promote positive images of Latinos in front and behind the camera. She also sits on the Advisory Board of the East Los Angeles Chicano Film Festival Cin Sin Fin. In March of 2008, Shawna was honored by La Opinion newspaper and the City of Los Angeles with a "Mujeres Destacada" award for her contribution to the community in the Arts and Culture sector. In September 2008, she was recognized at the Latina Symposium in Washington D.C. with the Anna Maria Arias Memorial Fund with an award and grant for being a Latina Entrepreneur as a filmmaker and owner of 4 Elements Entertainment. Shawna was named after a medicine woman named Shawnawa, that healed her great-great grandmother after an illness. Her great grandfather made a promise to the medicine woman that one day he would name one of his children after her. She is of Pasqua Yaqui (Mexican) and Apache (American) Indigenous descent and Spanish.