Ramona Diaz - Director/Producer

Ramona Diaz grew up in Manila and studied documentary filmmaking at Stanford.

Her first film, Spirits Rising is an hour-long documentary about women's role in the 1986 People Power revolution in the Philippines. Spirits Rising received a Student Academy Award, the Ida Lupino Director's Guild of America Award, a Golden Gate Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival, a Gold Apple from the National Educational Media Network and a Certificate of Merit from the International Documentary Association. It has been screened internationally and broadcast on public television stations in the United States and Australia.

In 1993, Diaz first interviewed Imelda Marcos for the film Spirits Rising. From the interview came the idea to make a documentary about the former first lady. In 1998, after raising money for the product, mostly from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, she went back to Mrs. Marcos to film her for the documentary. Shot in 16mm film by cinematographer Ferne Pearlstein, Imelda won the Excellence in Cinematography Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. Amidst the initial protest from Mrs. Marcos, the film had a very successful showing in the Philippines, becoming the first documentary to be distributed nationwide.

Her current project is The Learning which investigates the Baltimore city school system's experience with teachers from the Philippines.

Prior to pursuing a career as an independent filmmaker, Diaz was an associate producer for Cadillac Desert, a major PBS documentary series about the quest for water in the American West. She also line produced and edited an award-winning, 24-part television documentary series in the Philippines about the immigrant experiences of Filipinos residing in Europe and America entitled Apple Pie, Patis, Paté, atbp. Diaz has also worked in Los Angeles as a writer's assistant for Mary Tyler Moore Productions and as a producer's assistant for Lorimar Productions. She is a graduate of Emerson College and holds an M.A. in communication from Stanford University.