Guest Speakers 2006 Film Festival, Jan. 13-15 2006
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| Program | Movie Descriptions | Rates & Order Forms | Guest Speakers |
James S. Griffith
Author Jim Griffith, long-time chronicler of the West's unique cultural and spiritual heritage, is recognized as one of the foremost folklorists in the United States. He is the former director of the Southwest Folklore Center at the University of Arizona Library and the founder of the annual festival Tucson Meet Yourself.
Griffith has lived in and studied Southern Arizona for more than four decades. Known affectionately around town at Big Jim, he is the author of two University of Arizona Press books: Hecho a Mano: The Traditional Arts of Tucson's Mexican American Community (2000) and Beliefs and Holy Places: A Spiritual Geography of the Pimería Alta (2002). He is also the author of Saints of the Southwest, published in 2000 by Rio Nuevo. Although officially retired, Big Jim is currently working as a research associate at the Southwest Center.
Melissa Kelly — Friday January 13, 2006 at Primo Restaurant
Voted Best Chef in the Northeast by the James Beard
Foundation in 1999, Melissa Kelly has continued to receive kudos for her
original Primo Restaurant in Rockland, Maine which she named for her Italian
grandfather Primo. She opened Primo at the J. W. Mariott Resort at Starr
Pass this past April where she serves as consulting chef. Melissa graduated
first in her class from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New
York in 1988. Her earliest cooking lessons took place in her Italian
grandmother's kitchen.
Rita Maria Magadaleno
Rita Maria Magdaleno is the author of Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, and My Mother (University of Arizona Press, 2003), poems that tell the story of one family's history, spun out of World War II, Nazism, the Holocaust, and a daughter's relationship to her war-bride mother.
She was born near Dachau shortly after World War II to a German mother and a Mexican American GI. Her family moved to Arizona in 1947 and Rita was raised with her father's traditions-but she remains at heart a child of two cultures.
Rita received her M.A. in English and American Literature at the University of Texas at El Paso. She has served as Visiting Writer and Lecturer in Chicano poetry at the University of Augsburg in 1995 and 2002, and as Visiting Writer at the University of Bamberg, Germany, in 1995 and 2002.
Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including ¡Floricanto Sí!: A Collection of Latina Poetry, and her fiction has appeared in Walking the Twilight: Women Writers of the Southwest. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Patricia Preciado Martin
Patricia Preciado Martin, a Tucson resident, was born in Prescott in 1939. Martin graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Arizona in 1960 with a degree in elementary education. She has studied in California, Mexico, and Spain and served in the Peace Corps in Belize.
Named Arizona Author of the Year in 1997 by the Arizona Library Association, Martin has dedicated the past 20 years to documenting the history, culture, and traditions of Mexican-Americans in Arizona. She has received national attention for two oral histories based on interviews with Mexican-American elders throughout Arizona: Images and Conversations: Mexican Americans Recall a Southwestern Past and Songs My Mother Sang to Me: An Oral History of Mexican American Women. Her most recent oral history book Beloved Land: An Oral History of Mexican Americans in Southwestern Arizona with photographs by José Galvez was named a Southwest Book of the Year in 2004 and earned the 2005 Glyph Award in the history category.
Martin has earned numerous accolades for her work within the Tucson community. She has served four terms on the Arizona Humanities Council Speakers' Bureau and received their Distinguished Public Scholar Award of Excellence in October of 2000. She was a finalist in the prestigious Arizona Community Foundation Award in 1999, Arizona Author of the Year (1997) given by the Arizona Library Association, and Outstanding Latina Woman by the Mujer 2000 Committee. In 2003, she was honored with the University of Arizona Hispanic Alumni Achievement Award.
Mary Sue Milliken — Saturday January 14, 2006 at Agave Restaurant and "Tortilla Soup" screening, Crossroads Theater
Chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, radio and TV personality
 Inspired by a love for bold flavors and strong statements, Mary Sue Milliken has made her mark in the culinary world with home cooking from all over the world. For over two decades, Mary Sue and her business partner Susan Feniger have transformed street foods and comfort foods into critically acclaimed cuisine and become some of the country's foremost authorities on the Latin kitchen.
In 1981, Mary Sue, along with Susan, opened City Cafe on Melrose Avenue in LA. With only 39 seats out front and just enough room in back for a prep table, a hot plate, and a hibachi grill in the alley, the cafe quickly outgrew the space and moved to a larger site. CITY Restaurant (1985-1994) changed the culinary landscape of LA forever with eclectic dishes from Thailand, India, France, Italy, and Mexico as well as Mary Sue's mother's own recipe box. CITY wowed customers and critics alike.
In 1985, Mary Sue and Susan turned the cafe site into Border Grill, a "taco stand" serving authentic home cooking and street foods of Mexico. It too outgrew the tiny space and in1990 moved to its current home on 4th Street in Santa Monica where it now serves Modern Mexican food in an urban cantina setting. In 1998, the partners opened Ciudad in Downtown Los Angeles, presenting the bold and seductive flavors of the whole Latin world. In 1999, the Border Grill concept grew to encompass another restaurant at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.
A natural teacher, Mary Sue shares her passion for food through many media. Her television career began in1993, when she and Susan were two of sixteen chefs invited to cook with the legendary Julia Child in her PBS series "Cooking with Master Chefs." Mary Sue is a veteran of 396 episodes of the popular "Too Hot Tamales" and "Tamales World Tour" series with Food Network (1995-1999), and has had several homes on the radio dial since 1996, currently co-hosting a 2-hour Sunday morning talk show on KFI 640AM in Los Angeles. A prolific writer, Mary Sue co-authored five cookbooks with Susan: City Cuisine, Mesa Mexicana, Cantina, Cooking with Too Hot Tamales, and Mexican Cooking for Dummies. In 2001, the dishes of Border Grill and Ciudad "starred" in Samuel Goldwyn's feature film, "Tortilla Soup." Mary Sue and Susan also have a line of prepared foods under their "Border Girls" brand at Whole Foods Markets and a line of signature pepper mills manufactured by Vic Firth.
Mary Sue is an active member of the community, providing leadership roles in many educational programs, culinary associations, and charities. She takes time out to teach students participating in CCAP, Careers through Culinary Arts Program, a non-profit organization that prepares high school students for careers in culinary arts. She is an active member of numerous culinary associations like the Chefs Collaborative and played a founding role in Women Chefs and Restaurateurs. She contributes real leadership and time to Share Our Strength in its fight to end hunger and poverty in the United States and abroad by mobilizing industries and individuals and creating community wealth to promote lasting change. Mary Sue also supports the Scleroderma Research Foundation in its mission to find a cure for scleroderma, a life-threatening and degenerative illness, by funding and facilitating the most promising, highest quality research, as well as by placing the disease and the need for a cure in the public eye.
At the core, Mary Sue's love of food shines through. She still takes time to teach cooking classes and work the Border Grill booth at the Santa Monica Farmer's Market as time and travel allows. Her days are spent writing and testing recipes, creating menus, managing busy businesses, researching shows, and creating new products. After more than twenty years of being a chef and restaurant owner, Mary Sue is still pushing the borders.
Nadia Moraglio — Friday January 13, 2006 at "Big Night" screening, Crossroads Theater
Instructor in Italian and faculty adviser to the Italian
Club at the University of Arizona, Nadia believes that Italian culture can
be critical to a restaurant environment. She has used scenes from "Big
Night" to stimulate discussion of Italian food and culture.
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| Last updated December 10, 2005 |
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| Program | Movie Descriptions | Rates & Order Forms | Guest Speakers |
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