Join Sin Cinta Previa in a Zoom conversation with scholar, educator, curator, and memory worker Dr. Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz. Specializing in Latina moving image production, community and personal archiving, and relational feminist practices, she’ll share about her commitment to building community through film and video archival practice. We’ll also discuss her path to archiving as non-custodial, anticolonial, reciprocal, and healing practices. Hicks-Alcaraz reimagines preservation as an ongoing, creative, affective, and collaborative process, recovering and activating stories of Latinx communities on their own terms.

From Do-It-Yourself/Together (DIY/T) digital archiving initiatives to film curation and participatory memory workshops, in this community-centered talk, Hicks-Alcaraz will share her culturally grounded approach to preserving cultural memory. All of Sin Cinta Previa’s community members, video artists, and documentarians are welcome to discuss and ask questions about these and your own research and anticolonial methodologies.

We’ll discuss working with Latinx communities to create community-owned and digitized video archives. Hicks-Alcaraz will share her work supporting the Garifuna community in archiving efforts in California and at the Independent Media Center in Champaign-Urbana, IL. She’ll also share about her scholarly research into digital rasquachismo and the oeuvre of Muxerista filmmaker Osa Hidalgo de la Riva. This marks a full-circle moment and celebration for Sin Cinta Previa, which screened the video work of Osa Hidalgo de la Riva at its inaugural, educational programming in 2018.

Join Sin Cinta Previa in a riveting and reflexive conversation.

Event Date/Time:

Thurs. Feb. 26, 2026, from 7pm-8pm Central Time

Register for Zoom invite here: https://isu.zoom.us/meeting/register/VCXr9J8DQhK819g-keJ93w#/

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

About the guest speaker:

Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz is a programmer, scholar, and memory worker whose practice centers Latina and muxerista moving image cultures, community archiving, and relational feminist methodologies integrating pláticas and testimonio. She has screened film programs with the Latin American Cinemateca of Los Angeles, MIX NYC, Vincent Price Art Museum, and others. She has held previous appointments as a distinguished post-doctoral research associate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Hicks-Alcaraz is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies at UC Santa Cruz. and holds a Ph.D., Cultural Studies, Claremont Graduate University.

About the Host and Moderator:

Jose Luis Benavides is a Latinx and queer video artist, experimental documentarian, and Assistant Professor of digital media at Idaho State University. He recently held solo exhibitions at the International Museum of Surgical Science, the Chicago Art Department, and the Engine for Art, Democracy, and Justice. His first solo exhibition was held at Terremoto Magazine’s La Postal. His work has been screened and exhibited nationally at the Gerber/Hart Library and Archive, Chicago Film Archives, Rutgers University-Newark, the University of Massachusetts-Boston, Michigan State University, Tennessee State University, New Mexico State University, and Vanderbilt University. His work has also screened internationally in Austria, Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, and Turkey.

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: Chicago, Dr. Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz, Plática con Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz: Archiving Muxerista Moviemaking, Sin Cinta Previa