**Moni Vargas**

Moni Vargas is an AfroIndigenous award-winning filmmaker, artist and facilitator with 20 years of experience and a commitment to gender justice, radical inclusivity, and care. She has directed music videos, editorials, documentaries, scripted shorts, commercial and educational content, including ***Con Safos***, a one-hour documentary for PBS/KCET earning two Southern California Journalism Awards, two National Journalism Awards, and an Emmy Award nomination in 2022.
Between 2019 and 2021, Moni served as the Creative and Program Director at Breakthrough, a nonprofit culture change organization that uses media to promote human rights through a feminist lens. Moni directed and produced, *Our Stories in Vivid Color,* a nine-part short documentary series and interactive story archive by and for girls, women and gender expansive youth of color artists and activists.
*Audrey’s Poem,* a short narrative film Moni wrote, produced and directed, is included in the film anthology, *Big Little Girls* and won Second Place at the PDX Recovery Film Festival. She has also directed an 11-part university course with Queen Latifah and the pilot episodes of *Red Table Talk*, nominated for an Emmy Award in 2019.
Moni is the co-founder of ***Friends We Love*** / ***Nuyorktricity***, a Latine media production company she runs with her partner, Michael Vargas, based in Los Angeles, California. For the past 15 years, their clients have included Sony Pictures, PBS, Paramount Network, Will Smith’s Westbrook & Overbrook Entertainment, Vice, and Firelight Media, among others. Their film work has screened at international film festivals, the United Nations, and at New York’s prestigious Brooklyn Museum and The Bronx Museum.
Moni is skilled at managing projects from concept development through delivery with highly inclusive teams. She has developed a *Care-Centered Approach to Filmmaking and Storytelling*, facilitating seminars, workshops and trainings for organizations like The Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Represent Justice, Skoll World Forum and Double Exposure.
In 2022, she co-directed another one-hour documentary for the award-winning PBS/KCET ***Artbound*** series, earning an Emmy nomination, and a six-part documentary series featuring inspiring stories of athletes with dual citizenship for P&G. She had developed two unscripted projects: a half-hour pilot she executive produced and directed, ***Unapologetically Fly***, featuring a group of women of color in midlife who travel around the world and ***Healing Through the Home***, a transformative and inspiring lifestyle series.
Moni enjoys creative time with her family, especially cooking, living room sound baths and dance parties to her monthly Friends We Love **radio show** on WorldwideFM.

“A Rubén Ortiz-Torres Story”

KCET / Artbound - Documentary

Since the early-80s, artist Rubén Ortiz-Torres has been working as a photographer, painter, sculptor, writer, filmmaker and video producer. Often associated with the development of a Mexican form of postmodernism, Ortiz-Torres's life is a collage that explores the social and aesthetic transformations related to cross-cultural exchange and globalization.

Directors: Michael & Moni Vargas

DP: Michael Vargas

“Con Safos”

KCET / Artbound - Documentary

A pioneer of Chicano rock 'n' roll, Rubén Funkahuatl Guevara recounts his life in music, performance art and activism — from his time as lead singer of the doo-wop band The Apollo Brothers, his collaborations with Frank Zappa and Cheech Marin, and his crossover into the Chicano performance art world of the 1960s and 1970s — all of which shaped Mexican American culture.

Producer / Directors: Michael & Moni Vargas

Editor: Michael Vargas

“Red Table Talk” - Pilot

Director / Producer: Moni Vargas • Production Services: Nuyorktricity

Queen Latifah Show - 15s Late Night Spot

Director / Camera: Moni Vargas • Production Services: Nuyorktricity