souvenir

"Unarchive" juxtaposes the filmmaker's father's life with the political history of Chile – his birthplace – over the past century. It reflects on how we remember and how we forget, and the role of the camera in transcending the complex space in between.

Chilean refugee Daniela came to Canada as a child after her mother was assassinated during Chile’s dictatorship. Her father, Pepe, never wants to speak about Chile, but when her daughter Rocío starts to ask questions, Daniela decides to apply for Chilean citizenship for a first trip back. This triggers the Chilean government to piece together records never before connected in the paper days and leads them to uncover much more than Daniela expected.

In Epitaph, filmmaker Cecilia Araneda returns to her long-estranged homeland, eco-processing 16 mm film with leaves and fruit gathered from her ancestral home, weaving a lament for her family’s past and the vanishing landscapes of home. Filmed in both Chile and on the Tablelands in Canada, a site central to the modern understanding of plate tectonics, Epitaph incorporates eco-processed 16 mm footage, video, documents from public and private archives, and found footage to weave an epitaph to a home in the process of leaving the filmmaker, first as a result of exile and then to the gradual movement of time. Epitaph has been eco-processed on-site in rural Chile at the site of the filmmaker’s father’s family using boldo, figs, fig leaves, walnut leaves, apples, apple leaves, fall grapes, fall grape leaves, olives, olive leaves, plums, mint, yard flowers and other vegetation.

What Comes Between is an examination of personal memory and loss rooted in the filmmaker’s birth place – Chile – and her departure from that country long ago. The work is a collage film created with found footage from personal and historic sources, and original hand printed and tinted footage. Made at Phil Hoffman's Film Farm, 2009.

Shot on black and white 16 mm film, organically processed with olives, and hand-coloured in a rural area of Chile, lessons on flight examines the flight patterns of the green-backed firecrown hummingbird.

Shot at Bate Island in Ottawa, "landing" is made from hand-processed B&W 16mm film hand-coloured with organic and photochemical tones, video and found sound. "landing" examines moments of respite in between flight and movement, where landing becomes refuge.