24 minutes
Running Away to Yourself
Produced for audio and edited in Adobe Audition by Bea Portela.
Jeans Corduroy reflects on coming of age as a trans man in East Tennessee, and how queer identity impacts family, faith, and rural community.
Original reporting by Lane Wendell Fischer and photography by Shawn Poynter.
11 minutes
Finding FOOT
Shot, directed, produced, and edited on Premiere Pro by Bea Portela.
In 1984, two Yale students reflected on the power of the outdoors to bring people together. This idea became FOOT, or First-Year Outdoor Orientation Trips. At the heart of this story is charismatic Cilla, now in her 40th year of leading the program.
2026
Plug the Wells
Written by Bea Portela.
An op-ed published in the Houston Chronicle on Texas’ “zombie” well crisis and its threats to safe drinking water. Weak laws and poor enforcement puts communities, including my own, at risk.
Photography by Elizabeth Conley.