La Orquesta
Original short documentary
A retired music teacher sets out to create a new youth orchestra, the first of its kind for immigrant families in Georgia.
A sought-after music teacher and conductor, Juana Alzaga is tirelessly committed to her students. She’s led many school orchestras over her 40-year teaching career, but this one is different. The majority of her students’ families are immigrants from across Central and South America who’ve made new homes just outside of Atlanta, along Buford Highway — Georgia’s most diverse corridor. For most, this is their only opportunity for music education.
Told through cinéma vérité, carefully crafted scenes and personal archival footage, La Orquesta tells a different kind of immigrant story – one that centers art, beauty and the transformative power of music.
This film is currently in post-production with support from Latino Public Broadcasting’s Digital Media Fund and fiscally sponsored by the Southern Documentary Fund. For more information on grant or donation opportunities, please reach out here.
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Filmmaking Team
Monica Villavicencio - Co-Director, Producer, Editor
Monica Villavicencio is a Filipina and Nicaraguan-American writer and filmmaker. She tells stories because it’s the best way she knows to make sense of our lives. In previous incarnations, she was an NPR Kroc Fellow and has written and produced for public media, an aviation-themed Filipino travel show, and the University of San Francisco, among others. She studied literature and anthropology and also writes fiction.
Stephanie Liu - Co-Director, Producer, Editor
Stephanie Liu is a Chinese-American documentary filmmaker and writer. She's passionate about stories, both discovering and telling them. Before making films, she worked at ABC News’ Washington bureau and the World Bank, where she produced multimedia from Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya and the Comoros. Born in Chengdu and raised in the Deep South, she has since called many places home.
Kristian Melom - Director of Photography
Kristian Melom is an award-winning cinematographer of commercials, documentaries and branded content. He was born on the plains of Minnesota and graduated from San Francisco State University with an emphasis on documentary film. His work has screened at film festivals internationally and has been published by Short of the Week, BOOOOOOOM TV, Aeon, Canal 180, Directors Notes and The Bitter Southerner. He used to be a musician in his former career and is based in Atlanta, GA.
Diego Rojas - Composer
Diego Rojas is a Colombian/American film composer and screenwriter based in Québec City. Between 2013 and 2019, he toured and performed as a guitarist in Broadway musicals such as Mamma Mia, American Idiot, and School of Rock across the United States and Canada. Shifting his focus to film scoring since 2016, Diego has written music for short and feature-length films premiering at festivals such as Palm Springs International Film Festival, SXSW, and Visions du Réel, among others. In 2021, he launched his career as a screenwriter with the film Despierta, which premiered at the Festival de Cinéma de la Ville de Québec (FCVQ). In 2024, he was awarded the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) prize for best English-written screenplay at the prestigious Cours écrire ton court contest held by the SODEC. He currently writes and composes music for film as he continues to develop his short and feature-length films.
Rachel Saldivar - Sound Mixer
Rachel Saldivar is a lifelong recording artist turned production and post-production sound mixer and editor. With over 10 years of experience in vocal recording and music mixing, she has tailored her audio production skills to suit a wide range of projects large and small. From running sound boards on large budget, multi-character feature films, to recording intimate, content sensitive, sit-down interviews, for independent and network documentaires, Rachel's passion for high quality audio keeps her on the forefront of new technologies and techniques to capture the highest quality recordings for production.
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