Omara: Cuba’s Legendary Diva

Hugo Perez
Director
As a director, writer, and producer, Hugo Perez’s career has straddled documentary, narrative and branded storytelling. Perez produced Once Upon a Time in Uganda, a SXSW competition documentary which premiered theatrically in 2023. He recently served as writer on John Leguizamo’s American Historia, and director for PBS Kids’ Alma’s Way: My Way live action broadcast shorts. Perez served as editor and co-writer for Elliot Page and Ian Daniel’s feature documentary directorial debut There’s Something in the Water, which world premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival and was released on Netflix in 2020. Other credits include editor, co-producer, and co-writer on the feature documentary Island of Baseball, about Cuba’s role in integrating Major League Baseball; producer, director, and co-editor of Neither Memory Nor Magi, a feature documentary that explores the life, work, and legacy of the Hungarian poet Miklos Radnoti; producer and director of the PBS documentary Summer Sun Winter Moon; and executive producer and co-writer of Rodrigo Reyes’ feature documentary Purgatorio.

Perez has studied storytelling with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, collaborated with Pulitzer prize-winning novelist William Kennedy, and served as a guest artist for acclaimed theater director and artist Robert Wilson. He is in currently production on a feature documentary on Latino icon Ricardo Montalban with support from Latino Public Broadcasting. He was the recipient of the prestigious 2009 Estela Award for Documentary Filmmaking presented by NALIP – the National Association of Latino Independent Producers.

Dana Kuznetzkoff
Producer
Produced or managed such diverse projects as HBO’s pilot episode for Boardwalk Empire to their acclaimed series The Wire, and NBC’s Smash. With Doug Liman, she produced the first major scripted series designed specifically for 360-degree virtual reality, Invisible. Most recently, as the head of production for Disarming Films, Kuznetzkoff was a producer on the final episode of HBOs The Case Against Adnad Syed, directed by Amy Berg, and It’s Never, Over, Jeff Buckley.

The former head of media at Avex International, Kuznetzkoff made her Broadway debut as part of the producing teams for the Tony nominated John Leguizamo’s Latin History for Morons and Pretty Woman, The Musical. She is a Collaborating Artist for the Roundabout Theatre’s Reverb Festival and is a member of the Producers Council of the Producers Guild of America, NY Women in Film and Television and the Directors Guild of America. She is on the advisory boards of the Writers Guild of America East Made in New York Writers Room and The Hollywood International Film Academy in Beijing, China.