John Mraz

Mraz’s work in documentary productions has received scholarly awards and recognition. Made on Rails was given the Hubert B. Herring Award for "Best Videotape, Film or Non-Print Media," by the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies (1988). It was shown at a session of the American Historical Association convention in 1987 that was dedicated to Mraz’s method of videohistory. Both Made on Rails and Innovating Nicaragua were awarded the Latin American Studies Association "Award of Merit in Film" for "excellence in the visual presentation of educational and artistic materials on Latin America." One reviewer said of the productions on Nicaragua and the Mexican railroad workers, “Historians can learn a lot from these films, and they can be viewed with admiration for a colleague who with little budget but with much ingenuity is ‘writing’ history through a medium which is generally appreciated but less well understood”.

Presented (selective listing): X Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, La Habana, 1988. Annual Congress of the American Historical Association, 1987.

Mraz has written books and articles that do history of and through photography. He has directed documentary films, videotapes and digital productions about historical subjects, and has analyzed the portrayal of history in feature films. He has also been curator of major historical photographic exhibits. Mraz received a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Santa Cruz (1986).

Director, Innovating Nicaragua/Nicaragua innovando, Managua and Puebla: Ministerio del Interior and UAP, 1986/87. Distribution: U.S. and Canada—The Cinema Guild (New York). Latin America—Zafra/Latino Video (Mexico City). Europe—La Médiathèque des Trois Mondes (Paris).

Award: Latin American Studies Association "Award of Merit in Film" for “excellence in the visual presentation of educational and artistic materials on Latin America,” Latin American Studies Association Invitational Film Festival, 1986. Present ed (selective listing): VIII Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, La Habana, 1986. "Screening Days for Films from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific", Stockholm, 1987.

He moved to Mexico in 1981, and is a research professor in the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Puebla (Mexico). He has been a visiting professor and research fellow in Princeton, Oxford, Dartmouth College, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Auckland, the Harry Ransom Center of U. Texas, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and other institutions.

John Mraz (California, 1943) is a pioneer in the representation of history in modern media (photography, cinema, video, digitalization).