Noel Quiñones

Noel Quiñones (born July 20, 1959, in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican screenwriter, film director and film producer. He left Puerto Rico at age 18 to study cinematography and filmmaking at Columbia College in Hollywood, California. Immediately upon completion of is studies, Quiñones created his own company and began to produce television commercials for international clients. Profits from his commercial work allowed him to begin work on his first feature film, "Columbus' Legacy" (original title in Spanish "Raíces Eternas"), a film about the evolution of Puerto Rican culture. At its release in 1985, "Columbus' Legacy" garnered critical acclaim and attracted the attention of the Department of Education in Quiñones' native Puerto Rico, who invited him to tour the island's schools to show his film. Quiñones produced two short films in 1989. "The Bell" and "San Juan Story". Among several awards, each of these films was awarded a CINE Golden Eagle in the Entertainment category in 1991. In 1994, Quiñones began a collaboration with Tom Musca and Mark Kemble to produce "Flight of Fancy", a feature length film that was awarded the Best Film with a Latin Theme at the Hollywood International Film Festival (2000) and the Best Film Award at the Renaissance City Film Festival in Rhode Island (2000). Quiñones' most recent work includes the 2012 Emmy award winning "Los 17", a documentary produced in 2010 about educational transformation in a small mountain town in Puerto Rico and "100,000", an Emmy winning documentary also produced in 2010, dealing with the increasingly serious problem of stray dogs in Puerto Rico.