Cristina Kotz Cornejo
Professor, School of Film, Television, and Media Arts
Raised in a bilingual, bi-cultural family, and a descendant of the Indigenous Huarpe people of the Cuyo region of Argentina, Cristina Kotz Cornejo is a film/media maker working in fiction, documentary, and immersive media forms. Her work primarily explores the political and personal voices of the female outsider.
Kotz Cornejo’s short films have screened in festivals around the world, including Palm Springs ShortFest, Sao Paulo International Film Festival, Festival of New Latin American Cinema in La Habana Cuba, Outfest Fusion, BAMCinematek, SIFF in Seattle, Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá, Colombia, and many more. Her most recent completed work, an immersive 360º personal documentary film, the root is more important than the flower, won Best VR Documentary at Cinequest Film & VR Festival in the U.S., and was exhibited at festivals/venues such as M?oriland Film Festival and Wairoa M?ori Film Festival in New Zealand, ImagineNATIVE in Canada, Festival of Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories also in Canada, among others.
Her feature film debut, 3 Américas, premiered at Woodstock Film Festival, and streamed on Netflix and MUBI. Her short film, Jewel and the Catch, about African American lesbian activist and entrepreneur Jewel Thais-Williams, is included in OUTFEST’s UCLA Legacy Project LGBTQ+ Collection. Excerpts can be seen in the opening credit sequence of season 3 of Prime Amazon’s series Transparent, and in the documentary Commitment to Life, the story of the fight against HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles.
Kotz Cornejo has received support from Film Independent, the MacDowell Colony, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cine Qua Non Lab, the LEF Foundation, and the Online News Association/Knight Foundation. She is a contributing author in Filming Difference: Actors, Directors, Producers and Writers on Gender, Race and Sexuality in Film, University of Texas Press.
She is the recipient of the Mann Stearns Distinguished Faculty Award, the 2019 American Spirit Award for Special Achievement in Educating New Filmmakers from the Caucus for Producers, Writers, Directors and Variety’s 2021 Educator of the Year. She has previously served as chair of the Department of Visual and Media Arts, associate chair of production operations, as BFA program director and director of curriculum.
Personal website: www.wildwimminfilms.com
Courses
- MFA Thesis Project
- Fiction Film Directing
- MFA Production Workshop
- BFA Production Workshop
- Introduction to Narrative Drama
Academic Work
- 2009 “Framing Identities/The Evolving Self: Beyond the Academic Director,” Filming Difference Actors, Directors, Producers and Writers on Gender, Race and Sexuality in Film, edited by Daniel Bernardi, University of Texas Press.
Creative Work
- In Development, Dispatches from Buenos Aires, hybrid documentary essay
- In Development, Magic in The Desert, VR/XR immersive experience
- 2025, Woman Who Lives at the End of Time, 20 min.
- 2021, la raíz es más importante que la flor, 360º documentary, 9 min.
- 2014, Buena Fe, drama, 16 min.
- 2013, Hermanas, drama, 14 min.
- 2011, Despertar, narrative drama, 15 min.
- 2007, 3 Américas, narrative feature drama, 98 min.
- 2004, The War That Never Was/La Guerra Que No Fue, dramatic comedy, 8 min.
- 1993, Jewel and the Catch, documentary, 48 min.