Maša Hilčišin is an interdisciplinary visual artist, filmmaker, and educator whose practice spans documentary and experimental cinema, video art, photography, painting, collage, and experimental audiovisual performance. Moving between media, genres, and disciplines, her work often blurs boundaries, embracing hybrid forms and experimental approaches to storytelling.
With more than twenty years of experience in visual storytelling and socially engaged creative work, she explores the intersections of personal and collective narratives, gender, identity, memory, cultural representation, and social justice.
Alongside her individual artistic practice, she develops collaborative and participatory projects that engage art and storytelling as means of expression, empowerment, social dialogue, and collective reimagining. From 2015 to 2020, Maša co-founded and co-led SWAN, an international women’s art festival in Prague, in collaboration with a collective of artists and friends.
She teaches human rights and creative media production, focusing on the ethics of storytelling, social issues, personal and collective narratives. Additionally, she lectures in film directing, documentary filmmaking, and experimental cinema at Prague Film School. She also teaches human rights in various academic contexts at Anglo-American University, contributing to its School of International Relations and Diplomacy and School of Arts and Humanities.
Maša has collaborated with the Society for Creativity in Education (Společnost pro kreativitu ve vzdělávání), an organization committed to bringing creativity into schools and reimagining educational systems through innovative and inclusive practices.
She is also the co-founder of the Media & Film Initiative at Touching Lives, a non-profit based in Mumbai, India. The initiative aims to educate the children and young adults on hands-on skill building in Media & Film-making, use cinema for therapy and literacy in the classrooms and communities.
In 2020, Maša began developing a children’s book series that addresses themes of stigma, prejudice, and stereotypes. In collaboration with the Association of Foster Families, she co-created a book that centers on the experience of a child in foster care, shaped by creative work and storytelling with children themselves.
She is the founder and director of World Community Connect, an international organization dedicated to celebrating diversity and fostering inclusion through community art projects, creative education, and interdisciplinary collaborations with communities around the globe. Over the past several years, she has led visual storytelling workshops for women and girls in the Czech Republic, Georgia, India, and Mexico, fostering safe and expressive spaces for stories to be heard, and shared.
Maša also founded the Online Archive of Stories, a dedicated space for sharing, preserving, and honouring lived experiences, particularly those of women and girls.
Through this initiative, she seeks to create a space that fosters connection through storytelling, preserves personal histories, breaks the silence surrounding difficult experiences, and ensures that stories which might otherwise go unheard become part of a wider collective narrative.
In 2023, together with her partner, Martin Andersson, she founded Panta Rhei, a collaborative platform for experimental video, music, and performance art. Through their performances, they intertwine storytelling, experimental aesthetics, personal narratives, and socially engaged topics, creating immersive and transformative audiovisual experiences.
Her work has been presented at international film festivals and in galleries and cultural spaces worldwide. She is also engaged in creative arts therapy, community-based artistic practice, and interdisciplinary education.
Biography
My creative practice evolved through the intersections of art, inner journeys, and the worlds we share. Studying artists and creative voices across cultures, particularly generations of women artists over the past two centuries, profoundly shaped my artistic vision. Through personal storytelling, we can make overlooked stories visible, honour diverse experiences, challenge dominant narratives, and open new possibilities for dialogue, connection, and collective understanding.
Education
PhD, Theory and History of Theater, Film and Audio-Visual Culture Studies | Masaryk University
MA, European Studies | Univerziteta u Sarajevu, Università di Bologna
BA, World Literature and Library Science | Univerziteta u Sarajevu
Diploma in Holistic Integrated Creative Arts Therapy | Mind Body Education (Global) Pty Ltd.
Postgraduate Certificates in Meditation Therapy, Meditation for Children | Mind Body Education (Global) Pty Ltd.
VĚDOMÉ TĚLO - Somatické umění pohybu a Somatické terapie (CONSCIOUS BODY - Somatic Art of Movement and Somatic Therapy) | DanceLab Studio (Study in progress)
Publishing
"In Darkness We Find Light" published in Feminists Resisting Gendered Violence: Creative and Critical Responses, Editors: Hemangini Gupta, Fiona Mackay, Jan Breckenridge, Louise Chappell, Rachna Mehra, Rukmini Sen, Mailin Suchting, 2026
"KLARA" - Published by the, Association of Foster Families, Prague, September, 2022
"TARA" - Story about me and my mom, who was born a boy", Book for children, Community Connect, Prague, May, 2021
"Women Documentary Filmmakers: Framing War and 'Post-conflict' Zones", Prague College: CRIS Bulletin, Centre for Research and Interdisciplinary Studies, 2017
Short Story "Balcony" (Balkon) Presented at the Solo exhibition of photography by Milomir Kovacevic Strasni, April 2017
"Queer Representation in Post - Yugoslav Cinematography", Prague College: CRIS Bulletin, Centre for Research and Interdisciplinary Studies, 2012
Human Rights in Practice In "Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina 2008: Legal Provisions, Practice and International Human Rights Standards in the Bosnia and Herzegovina" with Public Opinion Survey, 2009
"(Re)presentation of Women in Contemporary Bosnian Cinema", Bread and Roses/Zagreb, Croatia, 2009
"Vae Victis" Na – Strani, Zbornik radova o seksualnosti (Collection of Works about Sexuality) 2007
"Women at Work" Humour Works Reader/City of Women, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2007
Collaborations
