Valerie Pires

Valerie Pires is a film scholar and curator. Her work focuses on transnational avant-garde, auteur, and exile cinema; the relationship between fascism and film, with particular focus on Italy, Spain, and Latin America; and film restoration and preservation. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Film Studies and a master’s degree in Arts and Culture Journalism, both from Columbia University in New York. Her work has been published by the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE), the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the Pulitzer Center, and Columbia University. In 2026, the Residencia de Estudiantes, one of Spain’s foremost cultural institutions, published her first book, En el balcón vacío. Her publications include “Grupo Nuevo Cine: The Making of a Movement That Lasted a Moment”, “How Did Italian 'Documentario Narrativo' Influence Michelangelo Antonioni’s Early Films?”, “Letter from Donostia: Exile, Censorship, and a Long-Awaited Screening”, and “From Mexico to the Basque Country: Restoring Memory Frame by Frame”. Valerie is the screenwriter and director of the award-winning fiction short film Left, Unsaid (2023). In 2026, Spanish cinema maestro Víctor Erice selected her to attend his intensive film residency in Galicia, Spain. She also curated the international film event “Foundations of Mexican Independent Cinema,” presented by the Lenfest Center for the Arts and Instituto Cervantes New York in April/May 2026.

Research: Film history, theory, and aesthetics; transnational cinemas; Italian and Spanish cinema; fascism and film; early Italian documentary; cinemas of exile; memory and identity in cinema; avant-garde and experimental cinema; alternative and independent film movements; Latin American independent cinema; cult queer cinema; early independent American cinema; film restoration and preservation; relationship between power and film; censorship and film festivals; interdisciplinary approaches to film and literature; understudied works and movements within the film canon; film criticism.