Zaira
ZARZA

Film and media - Canada

Contact details

Email.
zaira.zarza@umontreal.ca
Personal Website.
https://histart.umontreal.ca/repertoire-departement/professeures/professeures/in/in31207

Research topics

SCIENTIFIC PROJECT

"The Diaspora Revolution: Cuban Cinemas in the New Millennium"

"The Diaspora Revolution: Cuban Cinemas in the New Millennium" is the first monograph devoted to Cuban diasporic cinema. Drawing on over a decade of scholarship, archival research, and curatorial work, it offers a portrait of contemporary diasporic film production by Cubans and develops frameworks to analyze it. The book explores the compounded marginalization of these films and filmmakers in both the homeland and host societies as they navigate national and transnational structures. It foregrounds mobility, identity, and affect to study how diaspora transforms cinema, and to show how filmmakers reimagine diverse genres, including autobiographical and participatory forms. Through textual analysis, interviews, and autoethnography, the chapters examine migration documentaries, smartphone practices, archival films, transnational production, and return migration, revealing the inventive strategies Cuban diasporic filmmakers use to negotiate belonging, memory, ethics, and sociocultural ties.


Activities / Resume

BIOGRAPHY

 Zaira Zarza is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Film Studies at Université de Montréal/Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang. Her research interests include the cinemas of the diaspora and the economies of film and media in Latin America and the Caribbean. As a programmer, she has worked at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and the Cartagena International Film Festival (FICCI). She also directed one edition of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Film Festival. Zarza co-edited the volume Diffracting the North: Contemporary Latinx Canadian Experiences and Practices in Film, New Media, and Visual Arts (Concordia University Press) in 2025, published the book Caminos del cine brasileño contemporáneo (Ediciones ICAIC) in 2010, and co-curated the exhibition L’espace de plateformes (Carrefour des arts et de sciences, UdeM, 2023-2024). Her academic writing has also appeared in the Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Théorème, Intermédialités, and Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas. Her second monograph, The Diaspora Revolution: Cuban Cinemas in the New Millennium, is under contract with the University of Florida Press.