FERRERA FILMS

Antonio Ferrera CV/Bio-2025

Ferrera grew up in Schenectady, NY in his mother and aunt’s caffe and later their restaurant. His father Alfonso was an engineer at General Electric. It was in the restaurant where Ferrera earned the money to purchase a still film camera and later a video camera to record his family’s life. Having lost his father and 1⁄2 brothers and sisters thereafter Antonio felt the value and power of recorded images bear witness to our ephemeral existence. Ferrera’s first influences were the Italian masters of the 50s-70’s and Mel Brooks films. Antonio received a scholarship to New York University where he received a BA and majoring in English and American Literature with a minor in Philosophy and Fine Arts. (Medieval Lit with John Ramos, Literary Theory / Victorian Poetry with John Maynard, Thomas Hardy with William Buckler, Shakespeare with Richard Harrier, Etruscan Culture with Larissa Bonfante, John Richardson -Philosophy, and Guy Walton, Robert Rosenblum Art History)

At NYU he unofficially studied films at Jonas Mekas’s Anthology Film Archives where he gained a strong foundation in the Avant Garde and Experimental history of film from the Lumiere Brothers to Dimitri Kirsanoff and the 20’s Paris Avant-Garde to Maya Deren to Stan Brakhage Michael Snow- Peter Hutton -Tony Sharits and most importantly to the personal video work of Robert Frank. The Essential Cinema programs there were fundamental to his education in the magic of film’s possibilities and films made as callings rather than for profession.

Filmmaking in Chicago
Ferrera formally studied filmmaking in Chicago and firsthand in the making of the now seminal Cinema Verite -Voices of Cabrini which he shot and co-directed with Ronit Bezalel. The film bears witness to the redevelopment and its effects on the primarily African American Community that was displaced.  It was here that Ferrera produced his first experimental films where he hand painted the film itself to create moving color abstractions as environments. It was here that he made his 3 Cantos film for three projectors. In Chicago he studied with Herb Di Gioia ( Vermont People series made with David Hancock, including Duwayne Masure (1971), Chester Grimes (1972), Peter Murray (1975), and Peter and Jane Flint (1975).People Ron Pitts (cameraman for Murder od Fred Hampton). Cinematography Robert Buchar, Optical Printing and Animation Dennis Couzins and Stan Hughes.

Filmmaking New York

Ferrera returned to NYC in 1998 and began a 10 year partnership with Albert Maysles with whom he applied the first use of mini DV and Final Cut Pro as Co Director/Producer/Story Supervisor and editor for the films they made at that time. Four Cinema Verite Portraits for IFC of Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Robert Duvall, Jane Campion. A film for Bill Moyer’s on Memory and Death and finally the Peabody Award winning film The Gates about Christo and Jeanne Claude in 2005. Ferrera made another film about Wes Anderson and his film Life Aquatic and many more shorts about Christo and his efforts to realize his unfinished projects for Abu Dhabi, Colorado and Italy.

Ferrera continued honing and expanding his work by studying acting at Uta Hagen’s HB Studios along with Playwriting and personal performance with Kate Walat. Antonio formally studied drawing painting and sculpture at Hudson Valley Community College, Art Students League with Jill Nathanson and Sculpture at ( Bronze and Inflatables) SUNY ALBANY and had shows of his hand painted film projections at ICM LAB Gallery for Cycle of Birth 2013 ( cycles of chaos and order in color on hand painted projected film.)
In 2019 he filmed a graduation of the Alliance for Positive Change and hearing their stories was so inspired that he proposed making a film about their history and their seminal PREP class. Antonio worked on the film through Covid and in August of 2023 completed the film that is now being used by the agency to tell their story to clients and at HIV/infective disease/harm reduction conferences going back to the HiV AIDS crisis beginning with testimonials and filming of their PEER to PEER work to make people’s life experiences a force of agency to help others help others, transform social determinants of health to end HIV.