Growing up in El Paso, Christina Ivada felt invisible, so she spent her career as a

documentarian, making sure that others feel seen. That work has now

been recognized by the MacArthur Foundation with a genius grant. In fact, Christina and her creative

life partner, Alex Rivera, are the first married couple to each individually win the award.

Christina and I talk about how she has cultivated a junk aesthetic, a hionke aesthetic,

her gutsy first foray into film, and how she has seen firsthand in very real ways,

how film can change lives.

Christina, thank you so much for doing this. Yeah, sure. It's great. Christina, you grew up in

El Paso. You say you come from a long line of border crossers. Can you share with me your earliest or most

vivid memory of crossing the border yourself?

This might not necessarily be the first memory, but I can tell you what it was

traditionally like. My father, he owned and operated Yonke Juarez in Juarez, which is a

junkyard where I'm from. That's what we call a junkyard, call it Yonke. My mother helped run the one in El Paso. And so there was this back and

forth that was pretty much a daily that was happening. And what I remember the most is

driving in an air-conditioned car in the summer. This is the most vivid memory that I have.

I was driving in the summer and just looking out the window and wondering why it was that

as we were coming back from visiting my grandmother in Juarez, we're waiting in a specific line

because I would look over to the side and I would see many types

of folks, but I was focusing on girls that looked like me, brown skin, dark hair, maybe seven,

nine years old. And they were waiting in line outside in the hot sun with a parent. I just thought,

wow, that could be me. What's the difference between her standing in a

line and the hot sun having to discuss her documents? And myself, who's in this very comfortable

...