Salvador Carrasco

On January 10, 2015 Salvador Carrasco was honored at the Aero Theater by the Santa Monica International Film Festival with the "2015 Impact Award" celebrating the local and international educational, economic, and artistic impact of his work at Santa Monica College as Head of the new SMC Film Production Program. Other recipients of the SMFF Impact Award include film directors James Cameron and John Frankenheimer, as well as actor Pierce Brosnan.

Carrasco is the 2002-2003 recipient of the Moseley Fellowship in Creative Writing at Pomona College. He has taught directing at the University of Southern California; screenwriting at Pomona College; film theory and history at Santa Monica College; and he was the Advanced Directing Course Director at The Los Angeles Film School from 2003-2010. In July 2010 Carrasco was appointed as a tenured film professor at Santa Monica College, where he created a new Associate in Science degree program in Film Production.

Carrasco's first feature, The Other Conquest (La Otra Conquista), was distributed by Twentieth Century Fox and became the highest-grossing Mexican film ever at the time of its release. During its run in Los Angeles, The Other Conquest had great box-office success and wide critical acclaim, becoming one of The Los Angeles Times' Top 10 Films of 2000. LA Times' critic Kevin Thomas wrote: "Dazzling, Stupendous, Daring! In his bravura feature debut, Carrasco has created nothing less than a superb cinematic vision." Variety called The Other Conquest "the first 3 million dollar movie that looks like 30!" and in the words of Oscar-Watch's Sasha Stone: "Carrasco ought to emerge as one of the world's best directors, taking his place alongside such uncompromising giants as Martin Scorsese and Akira Kurosawa." The Other Conquest was re-released in US theaters in 2008, accumulating more than 40 rave reviews, and a 90% score with top critics on the Rotten Tomatoes website. The Other Conquest is now available on DVD.

Carrasco was born in Mexico City and now resides in Santa Monica, California. He first attended Bard College and then graduated in 1991 with a degree in Film and Television from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, receiving the Founders Day Honors Award. At NYU he wrote and directed three award-winning short films: Alone with His Void, Marblood, and To Fall in Exile. In 1992 Carrasco and producer Alvaro Domingo co-founded Carrasco & Domingo Films, a film production company based in Mexico City and now also in Los Angeles. They also created the Spanish-language cultural magazine, Litoral, which published a wide range of international writers and artists.