A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Rudy Valdez is an Emmy Award-winning Michigan-raised, New York City-based filmmaker committed to creating social, cultural, and political stories through a cinematic and meaningful lens. The Sentence (HBO), shot and directed by Valdez over the course of a decade, tells the very personal story of his sister’s plight in the criminal justice system while tackling subjects like mandatory minimums and sentencing reform. The Sentence won Valdez the 2019 Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking and the US Documentary Audience Award at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Valdez’s most recent project, ReOpening Night, is a feature film about The Public Theater’s staging of a beloved New York City institution, Shakespeare in the Park. It premiered on HBO Max in December.
Cinematography:
2021 Reopening Night
Director:
2018 The Sentence
2020 Make Him Known
2021 Breakaway
2021 Reopening Night
2023 Carlos
2023 Translators
Director of Photography:
2015 Buried Above Ground
2018 The Sentence
2020 Make Him Known
2021 Breakaway
2021 Reopening Night
2023 Carlos
2023 Translators
Producer:
2015 Buried Above Ground
2018 The Sentence
2020 Make Him Known
2021 Breakaway
2021 Reopening Night
2023 Carlos
2023 Translators
Cinematography:
2021 We Are: The Brooklyn Saints
Director:
2009 30 for 30
2021 Through Our Eyes
2021 We Are: The Brooklyn Saints
2024 Choir
Director of Photography:
2009 30 for 30
2021 Through Our Eyes
2021 We Are: The Brooklyn Saints
2024 Choir
Executive Producer:
2009 30 for 30
2021 Through Our Eyes
2021 We Are: The Brooklyn Saints
2024 Choir
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.