About

Her filmmaking careers spans over 30 years, resulting in a body of work that has won every major broadcast award including the George Foster Peabody Award and the Alfred E duPont Award. Her films have screened in festivals and theaters around the world and are novelistic in their structure, providing multiple points of connection for an audience. Finitzo allows the narrative arc of her character’s story to evolve, colliding with other subjects from the film, creating a complex, nuanced story that serves as a vehicle to deepen our understanding of society through everyday human drama.

Her work as a filmmaker can be found at mariafinitzo.com. Maria has taught at Northwestern University in the MFA in Documentary Media program and is on the Mentorship Board at Northwestern University for the MFA in Documentary Media.

After completing her last film, THE DILEMMA OF DESIRE which premiered at SXSW, Maria decided to return to photography, an early love, to explore the power of visual narratives. She currently teaches at The Santa Fe Workshops. She has studied with Maggie Taylor, John Paul Caponigro, Susan Burnstine, Holly Roberts, Reid Callanan, Rania Matar, Keith Carter, Elena Dorfman, Jay Maisel, John Sexton and Ernst Haas.

As an artist, I am interested in exploring the imagery that resides deep within our subconscious. My photographs begin with a story. Drawing upon the narrative language of dreams, mythology and abstraction, I use the craft of photography to investigate identity through memory juxtaposed with the recollections of childhood and family, the hidden sometimes frightening world of dreams and the ever-changing landscape of the contemplative world.