Lourdes Portillo and Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena featured in Texas Monthly article by Cat Cardenas

Lourdes Portillo was interviewed by journalist Cat Cardenas about her film Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena and the legacy of Tejana pop star Selena for a new article in Texas Monthly: For Decades, Countless Young Latinas Like Me Have Regarded Selena as an Icon. Maybe It’s Time We Took Her off the Pedestal by Cat Cardenas, Texas Monthly, April 2021.

“There’s a scene in Lourdes Portillo’s 1999 documentary Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena, in which she homes in on a group of young girls studying at the Tejano Academy of Fine Arts in Corpus Christi. One student wears a crop top along with a slicked-back bun and a hint of red lipstick, resembling a miniature Selena. Around her, about a dozen other Latinas with long, dark hair take turns hopping on the stage, singing in English and Spanish while they twirl around the room. They sometimes lock eyes with Portillo’s lens, confidently attempting to attack each note with the same passion and power for which Selena was known. The scene was filmed around 1998, just three years after the musician’s death. Watching it today, it’s striking how little has changed. Portillo has yet to see a celebrity speak to Latinos in quite the same way. “There have been other Latina singers and stars, but no one with the magnitude and charisma she had,” Portillo tells me. “She had a tenderness that made girls see themselves in her. They saw the possibility of being Selena.” “

—Excerpt from For Decades, Countless Young Latinas Like Me Have Regarded Selena as an Icon. Maybe It’s Time We Took Her off the Pedestal by Cat Cardenas, Texas Monthly, April 2021.