Busi Cortés (1950-) finished her university course on Communication at the UIA; then she looked forward to filmmaking and registered in the Film Training Centre (Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, CCC) in 1977, where she directed the short films Las Buenromero (1978), Un frágil retorno (1979) and the medium length film Hotel Villa Goerne (1981). The same year, she worked as assistant to Alfredo Joskowicz and Felipe Cazals in the series Historia de la educación. Her short film El lugar del corazón (1983), produced by UIA and the CUEC, won an honorable mention at the University Television Festival in Lima, Peru, in 1983. She participated in the television project De la vida de las mujeres, produced by UTEC, as scriptwriter and director of the short films: Las rumberitas, Alfonsina, Amor de raio, La mujer de Nicolás, Fuera máscara and La niña robada, all of them made between 1984 and 1985. Her first feature film, El secreto de Romelia (1988), is her adaptation of the short story by Rosario Catellanos El viudo Román; this film won the Ariel and Diosa de Plata Prizes to Best First Work, the Piterre Prize at the San Juan Festival, the ACE Prize of New York, all of them in 1989. She wrote, together with Carmen Cortés and Alicia Molina, the screenplay of her second film Serpientes y Escaleras (1991). The medium length film Déjalo ser (1993), of the documentary series 18 lustros de la vida en México, produced by the Film Library of the UNAM, was nominated to the Ariel in 1994. She wrote some scripts for the series Encuentros y desencuentros, financed by the CCC and CONACULTA. Since 1994, she devotes herself to making documentaries.
She has been a professor at the CCC, CUT of UNAM, UIA and the University of Colima. In 1998, she coordinated Pasando el siglo en el cine, a series made by students of several universities, and produced in television for the SEP the documentaries that are part of the series Retos y respuestas, based on the integration to society of handicapped people. From 1998 on, she became part of the teaching staff of the diploma courses at the National Film Library in the Federal District and in provincial sites.
In 2001 the General Direction of Film Activities of the UNAM awarded her with the prize José Rovirosa for best documentary for the film Paco Chávez, co-directed with filmmaker Francisco Chávez. In 2005, she directed Hijas de su madre: Las Buenrostro.
References in the multimedia
El secreto de Romelia, 1989, Direction
Serpientes y escaleras, 1992, Direction