Morphology of a Dream

A study of the landscape, the clouds and the weather around Merapi, a volcano located in Indonesia.

Forming part of a film constellation that stretches from Chile across the Pacific, in which Malena Szlam trains her camera on far-flung volcanic landscapes — by turns barren and verdant — the dazzling in-camera multiple exposures of Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya evoke the layered histories of the titular Bunya Mountains in eastern Australia’s Beerwah region, further deepened by sonified atmospheres from artist Lawrence English.

Filmed in the Andean Mountains in the traditional lands of the Atacameño, Aymara, and Calchaquí-Diaguita in Northern Chile and Northwest Argentina, ALTIPLANO takes place within a geological universe of ancestral salt flats, volcanic deserts, and coloured lakes. Fusing earth with sky, day with night, heartbeat with mountain, and mineral with iridescent cloud, ALTIPLANO reveals a vibrating landscape in which a bright blue sun threatens to eclipse a blood-red moon.

Moons in a journey through magnetic spheres, influencing subtle energies on Earth. A silent film with a hypnotic intensity.

Light breaks the darkness in playful rapture.

Like notes written in a diary, Rhythm Trail is an open-ended film composed of a series of Super 8mm sketches edited in-camera. These collected notes are traces of moments and places that reflect on the immediacy of sight.

In the sclerophyllous forests, the native aromas of Peumo, Quillay, Litre and Espino run through the Andes Mountains along with the Volcán River and the Maipo River. Through an initiative, this territory of rich biodiversity and geodiversity, of unique morphological processes, aspires to be recognized as a UNESCO Global Geopark. The region is house of "No Alto Maipo", a social and environmental movement, that tried to stop the construction of the Alto Maipo Hydropower Plant since 2007. Owned by the US-American company AES Gener S.A., the construction was completed in 2021 with 74 km of tunnels to divert the riverbed and generate energy.

Chronogram is a photomontage that explores stillness, motion, and memory. Using a 35mm still camera, multiple exposures were composed and edited in-camera, creating frameless sequences of images printed on 35mm filmstrips. When projected, these images become a non-linear, non-synchronized collage. The ephemeral quality of the images—their transparency, layering, and repetition—invites us to reflect on the role memory plays in perception, the ways we mentally reconfigure fragments to construct stability and meaning in an environment of perpetual flux.

Beneath Your Skin of Deep Hollow translates night and water into arrhythmic movements of light in a fugue of colours. Shifting impressions emerge on the surface of an agitated stillness, while darkness illuminates reflections and sight.