Amanda Calderón Valero, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, is a Tisch Performance Studies major and Italian and Producing minor student. Through her classes, she has incorporated both the fields of cinema and theatre and wishes to continue her profession in the film industry as both an actress and director. After graduating, she has plans to pursue further academia in the field of filmmaking. Beyond academia, she has been a model for years working in runway and pageantry, the latter became the source of inspiration for her capstone project.

Title of Capstone Project

Cut! You’ll win the Puerto Rican crown

Description of Capstone Project

A short film, entitled Cut! You’ll win the Puerto Rican crown, by Amanda Calderón Valero, is a comic relief film that aims to criticize Puerto Rican society regarding its beauty pageant standards. The film starts off by displaying Amanda’s experience as a Miss World Puerto Rico contestant, from 2020 to 2021, and through that, it evolves into a conversation about the attributing factor that makes a Miss worthy of winning a crown. With brief descriptions of the history of Puerto Rico, Amanda makes connections between its colonialism and the beauty queens' behavior to discuss why it influences what the Puerto Rican public deems appropriate for a queen to do in order to be considered a winner.