by the El Reportero”s news services
With an insatiable American appetite for (in)famous murder cases it was only a matter of time before the murder of Selena Quintanilla in 1995, at the age of 23, would get the cable TV spotlight.
Today on December 9, the Reelz Network’s wildly popular Murder Made me Famous turns its TV detective lens on the “Queen of Tejano” murder at the hands of her former employee Yolanda Salaivar. Reelz will recrate her death and events leading up to her murder in a Corpus Christi hotel on March 31, 1995. Most of the detectives who worked the case will be interviewed for the segment.
The Argentine Filmmaker Fernando Birri is honored in Rome
Relatives, relatives and admirers of the recently deceased Argentine filmmaker Fernando Birri (1925-2017), will go today to where their remains rest in a burning chapel to pay homage and tell him forever.
The headquarters of the Audiovisual Archive of the Workers and Democratic Movement, founded in 1979 and whose first president was the multi-award-winning Italian director Cesare Zavatini (1902-1989), will be the place of homage to the ‘very old gentleman’ who ‘with huge wings’ flew towards the utopia to continue moving towards the horizon.
Birri will always be remembered as one of the founders of the New Latin American Cinema, committed to the struggles for the emancipation of the peoples of the region, for his filmography and his commitment to the training of audiovisual professionals in his native Argentina and in other countries.
His image, work and creative spirit will endure in the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, created by him together with Gabriel García Márquez in 1986, of which he was its first director and considered a utopia come true.
There he keeps the apartment where he lived and on a wall, under the phrase ‘art never sleeps’, written by the American director Francis Ford Coppola, left for posterity a sentence very typical of his thought: ‘… but he dreams of the Open eyes’.
Among his works as director, Birri left the documentaries Tire Dié (1960), Rafael Alberti, a portrait of the poet (1983), My son the Che-A family portrait of Don Ernesto Guevara (1985) and Che, death of a utopia? (1999), among others.
In addition, the feature films Los inundados (1962), La pampa gringa (1963), A very old man with huge wings (1988) and El Fausto Criollo (2011).
Happy Birthday to the incomparable Rita Moreno
Today in 1931 the incomparable Rita Moreno was born in Puerto Rico. Moreno is a pioneer in the world of entertainment, but more so for Latino performers – paving the way for many.
The singer, dancer and actress is the first performer to win an Emmy, Grammy, Tony and Oscar (EGOT) and the only Hispanic to do so. Her seven-decade career has garnered her the prestigious Hispanic Heritage Award, The Kennedy Center Honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the list goes on. Last month she was honored at a gala at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington; where her portrait resides in the National Portrait Gallery for her great contribution to the arts in the U.S.
WOW. Not bad for the 5’2” girl from Humacao born to a seamstress.
The 86-year-old talent has multi-generational fans. Many remember her in “West Side Story” in her 1961 role of Anita, a role she won the Oscar for. Then younger fans were introduced to her as Liliana on Jane the Virgen. There have been many roles in TV and movies, however, she often cites Broadway as her first love, having started her career at age 13 on Broadway. By the time she arrived in Hollywood in the 1950s she was a stage veteran.
