Bio
Vicky Funari is a documentary filmmaker, editor, and teacher. She produced, directed, and edited MAQUILÁPOLIS [city of factories] (2006), a piercing look at globalization through the eyes of Mexican factory workers (co-directed by Sergio De La Torre). She produced, directed, and edited the non-fiction feature Paulina (1998), a story of human resilience, about a Mexican woman who redefines and reclaims herself after being trafficked as a child (co-produced with Jennifer Maytorena Taylor). She directed and edited Live Nude Girls UNITE! (2000), a fierce, funny account of the first strippers’ union in the US (co-directed by Julia Query). Her critically acclaimed films have screened in preeminent film festivals, including Sundance, Locarno, Havana, Rotterdam, SXSW, Morelia, Ambulante, and Tribeca. Her films have won numerous awards, including Grand Jury Prize and Audience Awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival; Vision Award at the Hamptons Film Festival; and Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Women’s International Film Festival of Barcelona. They have aired on PBS, HBO/ Cinemax, and the Sundance Channel. Funari’s earlier work includes skin-es-the-si-a (1994) and Alternative Conceptions (1986).
Funari’s work encompasses a commitment to co-creative and community-oriented processes. She builds project elements and collaborative engagement campaigns to keep the work connected, useful, and accessible to the people represented in the work and to maximize its real-world impact. With MAQUILÁPOLIS and its Binational Community Engagement Campaign she and her team modeled this approach, partnering with factory workers and grassroots organizations to promote public dialogue and social change.
Funari is a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow and a MacDowell Colony fellow. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Banff Center for the Arts and an NEA Artist-in-Residence at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. Funari also works as a consulting editor, editor, and producer. She edited the documentary Strong!, directed by Julie Wyman, which aired on the PBS strand Independent Lens in 2012. She served on the board of directors of the Latinx film organization Cine Acción from 1996-2000. She began her film career in 1985, assistant directing the indie feature Working Girls, directed by Lizzie Borden.
She is a Visiting Senior Lecturer in Visual Studies at Haverford College, where she teaches documentary filmmaking and designs interdisciplinary programming and curriculum. She was on the team that developed the Visual Studies Program and the VCAM building (Visual Culture, Arts, and Media), both of which launched in 2017. She is the originator and programmer of Strange Truth, an annual non-fiction film and performance series held at Haverford College and the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. Among the programs she has developed and/or coordinated at the College are the DocuLabs Program, the Tri-Co Film Festival, and the Flaherty Seminar Scholars Program.
Her current projects-in-progress include: Pool Movie (working title), in post-production, a story of healthy aging, community, and ladies in a pool; and Zadok on the River, in development, a feature documentary and social practice artwork about American rivers and their environmental and human histories.