Cristina is a storyteller, media maker and media arts educator, recognized by VARIETY as 2021 Educator of the Year.

Born in Michigan but raised on the West Coast of the United States and in Buenos Aires, Argentina in a bilingual, bicultural family, Cristina Kotz Cornejo is also a descendant of the Indigenous Huarpe people of the Cuyo region of Argentina.

As an independent filmmaker, Cristina's debut feature film, 3 Américas, received DVD distribution, streamed on Netflix and was represented by Cinetic Media’s, Film Buff.

Cristina’s short films have screened at festivals around the world. Her documentary short film, Jewel and The Catch, was selected by Outfest to be part of UCLA's Film and TV Archive. Excerpts can be seen in the opening credit sequence of season 3 of Amazon’s series, Transparent and in the 2023 documentary, Commitment to Life about the AIDS crisis.

Cristina’s most recent works are a fiction narrative film, Woman Who Lives at the End of Time about to be launched and an immersive 360° film that has played in festivals in the UK, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, Canada, and the US. It won Best VR Documentary at the Cinequest Film and Creativity Festival and was chosen for a Special Mention by the Jurors at the FICWALLMAPU, (Indigenous Film & Arts Festival) in Temuco, Chile. She’s also in development on a VR/MR experience in collaboration with VR expert, Damián Turkieh. Cristina is in post-production on a personal documentary and in development with an essay documentary film to be filmed in Argentina.

Cristina has received support from Film Independent, the MacDowell Colony, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the LEF Foundation, Cine Qua Non, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, NALIP (National Association of Latino Independent Producers), Online News Association, the Knight Foundation, the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts and the Sundance Institute.

Cristina is also contributing author in Filming Difference: Actors, Directors, Producers and Writers on Gender, Race and Sexuality in Film, University of Texas Press (edited by Daniel Bernardi); May 2009.

She’s the first Latina Full Professor of media production in the US, and teaches in the School of Film, Television and Media Arts (formerly the Department of Visual and Media Arts) at Emerson College. Cristina is the recipient of the Mann Stearns Distinguished Faculty Award and the 2019 American Spirit Award for Special Achievement in Educating New Filmmakers from the Caucus for Producers, Writers, Directors.