Credit: Chris Lafaro

Kari is a writer, filmmaker and cultural worker; they tend to place-based, genre bending story worlds where communities love up and fight forward. A 90s Queens kid from the Colombian corner of the spacetime continuum, they create in the traditions of Immigrant communities resisting assimilation into the American dream and contributing to Native, Black, and Neuroqueer imaginaries that confront the U.S. nightmare. 

Kari came into filmmaking through movement work as a youth producer with Global Action Project in 2004, where they grew into an educator, designing media programming with grassroots organizations and for public television. During this time, they also supported housing, education, and anti-police brutality campaigns as an organizer. From 2017 to 2022, Kari founded and operated macorina media: a small production company engaging artists with hyper-local to regional coalition work, including Just Transition, Cancel Rent, Amazon Out of Queens, DC Tenant Strike, emergency resilience planning, and alternatives to policing. 

Their short films and scripts have received notice from industry-recognized competitions & film festivals, including:  Launchpad Finalist (2021), ScriptPipeline TV Writing Contest (2021), Cinestory TV Writing - PMC Scholarship Winner (2022), Official Latino Film & Arts Festival (2020), Tides Film Festival (2020), Indie Short Fest (2020), Montreal Independent Film Festival (2020), Screen at Rooftop Films, Queens Drive-in Summer Series (2020) and Shore Scripts Short Film Fund (2021). They are an appreciative member and eternal fangirl of the Brown Girl Doc Mafia. 

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