As part of the city’s calendar of Tricentennial arts activities, URBAN-15 in 2018 will debut “Hidden Histories,” a new monthly, magazine-format video series that pursues and preserves the stories, lives, and places that make San Antonio an inspiring cultural treasure. With the support of the San Antonio Film Commission and the San Antonio Area Foundation, URBAN-15 has developed this project to ensure that the histories memorialized by the Tricentennial celebration and by World Heritage efforts truly reflect the diversity of this region, which has been inhabited for over 10,000 years—well before 300 years of European settlement. Community-produced media is one way we can broaden public participation in official histories.

Over the course of 2018, Hidden Histories will premiere 12 monthly screenings live in our studio, free of charge. Each screening will highlight archival interviews with community leaders; significant performances by musicians, dancers and poets; interactions with working artists; lost documentaries; forgotten narrative films; and vintage discussions of important community issues. Held in our studio, these live screenings will be supplemented by interviews and discussions with participants, family members of those featured, and field experts. Following each live screening, video segments will be rescreened throughout that month via our internet broadcasting studio, and afterwards archived online for 24/7 access.

January’s segment will introduce the series and then feature the life and work of Cenobio Hernandez, a local composer in the 1920s and 30s who wrote music for silent films that screened on the Westside of San Antonio at the Palace and Nacional theaters. A trove of his music was recently found by his grandson, Ricky Hernandez, who produced the album Recuerdos: Musica para Piano por Cenovio Hernandez, and who will host and facilitate a discussion of his grandfather’s work.

Live screenings will take place the first Monday of the month. Online screenings can be viewed at urban15.org/live-stream.