AboutMe
I combine careers as a scholar, film critic, media archivist, and cultural entrepreneur. I hold an MA and a PhD in Latin American Literature (University of Oregon and Arizona State University, 2000) and an MA in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (New York University, 2013). I am the author of Sitios de Contienda. Producción Cultural y el Discurso de la Violencia (Madrid, Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2010) and Cinembargo Colombia. Ensayos críticos sobre cine y cultura colombiana (Cali, Universidad del Valle, 2009), published in English by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012. I am the co-editor of Humor in Latin American Cinema (NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Currently, I am forwarding two research projects: Film Archives, Cultural History and the Digital Turn in Latin America (a digital humanities collaborative project) and Memoria Nacional/Movilidad transnacional: la experiencia fílmica colombiana en el extranjero en años recientes.
I have worked with media archives at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Anthology Film Archives, Anthology Film Archives and the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (NYC). I have been an organizer and a participant in the Archival Exchange Program (APEX) from NYU-MIAP (Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile 2013-2016). I have been a university professor in the US for almost twenty years (UNCG, Univ. of KY, and NYU).
I have also taught courses on audiovisual patrimony administration at the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano and on Colombian cinema at the Escuela de Cine y Televisión of the National University (Bogotá). As Archives Consultant for Proimágenes Colombia, I coordinated the restoration and presentation of the films of Carlos Mayolo, and I have been working on the preservation of the the Yuruparí TV series. For the latter, I successfully obtained grants from the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT) and the Colombian Ministry of Culture in order to preserve and catalogue a big segment of the almost 2000 audio and film elements of the collection.