Zaira Belen Aguilar is a Mexican-American filmmaker who grew up in Los Angles with a passion for filmmaking. From a young age, she knew she wanted to tell stories. Growing up, she was always the one behind the camera trying to capture every moment or re-taping over scenes on her VHS collection. By the time she graduated high school, she left her footprint by winning first place for her exploratory documentary, L.A. After Dark, at the National High School Journalism Convention in 2011.

 

     Zaira continued her cinema studies at Santa Monica college, eager to learn she wanted to be versatile and acquire as many different skills as she could. She began to collaborate in various student film projects as a production assistant, script superior, editor, special effects make-up artist, and first AC.  While Zaira would work on sets during the weekends, on the weekdays she was busy running her own non-profit film program for underprivileged youth at Sun Valley Middle school. For two years she shared her passion for filmmaking inspiring and teaching kids how to creatively express themselves through filmmaking. By the end of the first year, they had successfully put on their very own SVMS film festival showing an hour of content that ranged from short films, music videos, commercials, public service announcements, stop-motion animation as well as film trailers. By the second year, the film program and their annual film festival had doubled in size. In 2015 she graduated from Santa Monica College with honors and received a full academic scholarship to continue her film studies at San Francisco State University.

 

In her first year, she was accepted into the 56th annual SFSU film finals festival, for her comedic documentary, Savages. She spent her time in the bay area refining her skills as well as picking up some new ones. She collaborated on thesis films, film projects, and film competitions as a writer, director, editor, sound designer, producer, production designer, set designer, colorist, cinematographer, and drone operator. In 2017 she was one of the sixteen students to be admitted into the university’s year-long thesis program in which she wrote, directed, produced and edited her short narrative fiction film, Dear Bella. In May 2018 Dear Bella screened at the iconic Roxie Theater, in San Francisco, in which Zaira was awarded the prestigious Robin Eickman cinema student scholarship for her directing and editing style. Dear Bella will soon begin to submit to film festivals within the next few months. On May 24, 2018,  Zaira graduated cum laude with a Bachelors degree in Cinematic Arts with an emphasis in film production.