Valerie Castillo Martinez Flips the Usual Narratives
Valerie Castillo Martinez
In this profile series, Revry is highlighting authentic contributors to the LGBTQ media and entertainment community. We ask questions to find out who they are and where they are going in the future. The questions remain the same but the answers tell their unique story. It’s time to explore and celebrate true representation beyond the limits of Hollywood.
Valerie Castillo Martinez is a Filipina American filmmaker who founded her company IndieFlip, to make films that deal with underrepresented subjects, cross-cultural themes and flipping the usual narratives. Her emphasis in innovative storytelling, collaboration and international co-productions has led to some of her films' successes. Her shorts have played in top-tier festivals such as Berlin, Venice, Toronto, Busan and SXSW and won numerous awards worldwide. Her first feature film as writer and producer DEATH OF NINTENDO world premiered in Berlinale Generation in 2020. It participated in the Tribeca Film Institute Network, Film Independent Producers Lab, and Venice Gap Financing Market. It won a Special Jury Award in Screenwriting at the 2020 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and a YCC Critics Award for Best Film. Valerie also taught as an adjunct professor at University of Tampa and will be teaching at Columbia University in the spring. She worked as an Artist Development Manager for Film Independent, where she helped run Project Involve, Producers Lab and Fast Track, and helped design and moderate inaugural initiatives such as the Netflix Film Club shorts, Netflix Amplifier Program, and CNN Docu Series Intensive Program. She is a Berlinale Talent in 2020, an IMDb Rising Talent Filmmaker and a participant of the Vilcek Foundation's New American Perspectives program. She recently completed the Cine Qua Non Storylines Lab for her next feature, EN ROUTE. She has an MBA from Wilmington University, an MFA from Columbia University, and is a US Air Force veteran.
What are you best known for?
I'm a creative producer and I'm probably best known for writing and producing the film DEATH OF NINTENDO, which is a coming-of-age story based on my childhood growing up in the Philippines in the 90's. It premiered in Berlinale Generation in 2020 and is now available on most platforms.
What is the first thing you produced?
I would say that in addition to other school work or exercises I've done, my first official short film as producer which was my thesis at Columbia University is PRIA, shot in Indonesia. It was a larger scale, international co-production that had a lot of moving parts, and was a testing ground for all the lessons I've learned about producing.
What are you working on that no one knows about yet?
I'm producing another coming-of-age film here in the US about girl skateboarders and I'm writing my second feature about a lonely flight attendant who contemplates her poor decisions and makes sense of her connections.