Erika Valenciana

Filmmaker, printmaker and educator, Erika Valenciana–a Chicago native–is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago’s Film and Video program. She has directed and collaborated on several social issue documentaries. Valenciana’s short film on teenage pregnancy “Athina” was screened at Festival de Cannes Short Film Corner and awarded first place at Columbia’s Latino Student Film Festival. She was a 2015 Diverse Voices in Docs Fellow, sponsored by Kartemquin Films, where she workshopped "La Mitad del Mundo,” which shared the stories of young survivors of sex trafficking in Ecuador through live action and stop-motion animation.

Valenciana was a participant in the 2019 Tribeca Film Institute’s If/Then Shorts program for her documentary “Brewer,” which features women in craft brewing and normalizes their presence in a male dominated industry. She is also the 2019 Diversity Fellow for the Stowe Story Labs’ Fall Narrative Lab for her feature length script “The Punk Show in Chicago.” Valenciana is in production on a short documentary about bird conservation in Chicagoland.

Valenciana’s passion is bringing stories of marginalized groups, particularly women and people of color, from the background to the foreground, and, through her teaching artistry, give others the space and skillset to tell their own stories.