The Doors that Open after Winning a Student Academy Award
Catching up with directors Patricia Riggen and Patricia Cardoso
It’s Student Academy Award week! In celebration of the 44th competition, meet two Latina filmmakers who began their careers as winners.
Patricia Riggen
Riggen won a gold medal in the Narrative category in 2003 for her short film “La Milpa” (“The Cornfield”). She went on to direct five features, including The 33(2015) and Miracles from Heaven (2016).
I shot “La Milpa” in Mexico, and I couldn’t believe they gave me the gold medal for a Spanish-language film. Winners were invited to spend a week in Los Angeles, where the Academy took us to the American Society of Cinematographers and the Directors Guild of America. I thought, “Wow, this is the real thing.”
It was a great feeling to step inside those buildings and imagine one day being a part of them.
That trip to LA, and the time I spent with all the other students at the Academy, reinforced the idea that this is what I wanted to do and that I would persevere. Today, I am a member of both the DGA and the Academy.
Winning the Student Academy Award really inspires you because you see it, you touch it, you smell it.
It’s the most amazing award, period. My year was the 30th anniversary of the competition. There was a big luncheon with generations of SAA alumni, and I remember seeing incredible, big-time directors in the audience during the ceremony.
After I won, everyone asked for my short film, but when they saw that it was in Spanish, nobody called me. It was still a stigma back then: that if you direct in another language, you can’t direct here (even though I was studying at Columbia University).
I feel like my colleagues from Mexico [Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro] have come to change that. They paved a new way by directing Harry Potter and space movies as opposed to only Latino subject matters.
I have done five features already and I’m starting to work in television. Throughout my career, I’ve taken on all kinds of subjects. If it’s a good story, I’ll do it. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it moves something in you.
Patricia Cardoso
Cardoso won a gold medal in the Dramatic category in 1996, as well as the DGA Student Award, for her short film “The Water Carrier.” She went on to direct Real Women Have Curves (2002), which earned the Audience Award for best dramatic film and the Special Jury Prize for acting at the Sundance Film Festival.
When asked what she recalls about Student Academy Award week, she didn’t hesitate.
Best week of my life.
It was awesome because they put us up at a hotel and we had activities the whole week. We met with fellow film students, got to know them, saw their movies. We were taken to the Directors Guild to talk to directors, the Writers Guild to talk to writers, the Cinematographers Guild to talk to cinematographers… I met Conrad Hall there, which was wonderful. I felt like my work was valued and appreciated by a lot of really caring and loving people.
It still opens doors for me, twenty years later. People are very impressed by it—and that specific film still gets me jobs.
Almost anywhere in the world, especially in the film industry, Academy recognition is a seal of approval. It’s your peers who have judged you.
To students aspiring to make films: have fun, enjoy it and keep at it.
You have to develop a thick skin because there’s a lot of rejection, but make sure to keep your own voice. Don’t lose it.
For me, growing up in Colombia, a filmmaking career wasn’t on the horizon.
I think being an astronaut would have been more feasible than being a filmmaker.
But I loved telling stories, even before I learned how to read and write. I also loved to draw, as a child, as a teenager and even when I was in college. I remember making little picture books that now I know are storyboards. Only when I was in grad school at UCLA did I realize, “Wow, I was making storyboards when I was ten years old.”
Learn more about the Student Academy Awards here.
