Speakers:
Dr. Gregg J. Dimmick, MD: Historical Documentaries:
Compressed and Edited Truth
Dr. Dimmick
is a vocational historian who has conducted scholarly research
and written award-winning books in Texas history. He received
his B.A at Texas A&M University and his medical degree at
the University of Nebraska in 1977. He is a practicing
pediatrician in Wharton, Texas where he has lived since 1980.
He has conducted extensive archaeological excavations at the
San Jacinto Battlefield, the Fannin Battle Site, and at
several Indian sites across Texas. Among his numerous
publications, his books include Sea of Mud, published
in 2004 and General Vincente Filisola's Analysis of Jose
Urrea's Military Diary published in 2007 by the Texas
State Historical Association. His valuable collections of
battlefield artifacts have been exhibited in formal displays
at the Cushing Library at Texas A&M University, the Bob
Bullock State History Museum, and at the Fort Bend County
Museum. He has made numerous television appearances on the
Discovery Channel for "Unsolved History: The Alamo," on the
History Channel for "The de la Pena diary," and on Houston's
Channel 55 for "Santa Anna's Army." He has received numerous
awards including the San Jacinto Award, the Catherine Munson
Foster Memorial Award for Literature in 2005, and the San
Antonio Conservation Society's Citation in 2007.his
current projects include archaeological research at the
Bernardo/Pleasant Hill Plantations and work on a new book
entitled, Santa Anna's Army in Texas, 1835-1836.
John J. Valdez: Prejudice and Pride: Latino History
is American History
John J. Valdez is a Rockefeller Fellow, graduated
from the CPB/PBS Producers Academy at WGBH in Boston and the
film program at New York University's Tisch School of the
Arts. He lives in New York and has been writing, producing and
directing award winning nationally broadcast documentaries for
PBS and CNN for the past 18 years. His films with Dan McCabe
are currently running on national prime-time broadcast on the
landmark PBS series Latino Americans. The two films War
and Peace and Prejudice and Pride narrated by
Benjamin Bratt tell the epic story of the Mexican American
fight for equality from World War II through the 1970s.
Valcez had two films on the acclaimed PBS series POV: The
Last Conquistador and Passin' It On which was
nominated for an Emmy. He directed the first hour of the PBS
series Making Peace and directed The Divide,
the first hour of the PBS series Matters of Race. At
CNN, Valdez wrote, directed, and produced the award winning
film High Stakes Testing for their prime-time
documentary series CNN Presents. The film was an
hour-long investigative work about the Bush administration's
education policies.
Valdez received an Emmy nomination in 2010 for his film The
Longoria Affair which aired on the PBS series Independent
Lens. Another film, The Chicano Wave also aired
nationally on the PBS/BBC series Latin Music USA in
both the United States and Europe.