Maria Elena Gutierrez has been CEO and managing director of the VIEW Conference in Italy since 2005. She took a very small national event and put it on the world scene. Maria Elena is also the Director of VIEW Conference’s digital movie Festival, The VIEWFEST. Born in Mexico and raised in California, Maria Elena Gutierrez first studied at the University of California in Santa Cruz and then at Stanford University, where she received her masters in 1990 and her doctorate in 1995. Maria Elena taught Cinema and Italian Literature at the State University of New York SUNY in Buffalo, where she became an associate "tenured" professor in 2000. Throughout her career she has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities, the Cesare Pavese award for her doctoral thesis and the Milton Plesur Award of Excellence for university teaching. Her concentrated area of research in literature is Surrealism, a theme about which she has published many articles including a book dedicated to the work of Alberto Savinio.