About
John is a Peabody Award winning filmmaker, whose work has received two national Emmy nominations. He has directed a dozen documentary films for primetime national broadcast on PBS and CNN over the past 25 years. His body of work explores race, power, and identity through the Latinx experience.
Valadez has tackled diverse and often controversial subjects, bringing thoughtful, and emotionally engaging work to a national audience. His latest film, American Exile (PBS/2021) aired nationally in primetime. The film explores the deportation of US military veterans, and played an important role in helping to change national policy, allowing deported veterans and their families to return home.
Other major works explore a diverse range of subjects including: the lynching of Mexican Americans in the West (The Head of Joaquin Murrieta PBS/2017), the Chicano struggle for equality and justice (Prejudice and Pride /2013 for the PBS series Latino Americans), Latinos in World War II (War and Peace/2013 for the PBS series Latino Americans), the birth of Mexican American civil rights (The Longoria Affair/ 2010 aired on the PBS series Independent Lens), The history and evolution of Chicano Music (The Chicano Wave/2009 for the PBS series Latin Music USA), public art and the genocide of Native Americans in the Southwest (The Last Conquistador/2008 aired on the PBS series POV), the devastating impact of standardized testing on America’s most vulnerable children (High Stakes Testing 2005/ aired on the documentary series CNN Presents), the resegregation of American schools (Beyond Brown/2004 received a primetime national broadcast on PBS), contemporary segregation in a small southern town (The Divide/2003 for the PBS series Matters of Race), Latino gangs in Chicago (Soul Survivors/1997 for the PBS series Making Peace), and the false imprisonment of a leader of the Black Panther Party (Passin’ It On/1994 aired on the PBS series POV).
John’s films have garnered top prizes at film festivals from San Francisco to Chicago to Atlanta to Mumbai, have been broadcast across the United States, Canada and Europe, and have been featured at major museums and cultural institutions – including the Hirshorn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, Lincoln Center, the Smithsonian Institute, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
John grew in up Seattle, and taught photography in rural India.
