Memory Work: The films of Cecilia Araneda
Thursday, April 29th, 19:30h
Cafe Ex, Club Saw
67, rue Nicholas Street, Ottawa, Canada

“The first thing I remember was the step between.”  Chilean-born, Winnipeg-based filmmaker Cecilia Araneda has been working with images since at least 1998, when her first documentary, CHILE: A HISTORY IN EXILE, was released.  She’s been living with images for even longer.  As the title of her first film makes clear, the experience of exile and the absent presence of Chile form a background for much of Araneda’s exploration of memory.  Araneda works in video and film, in fiction, documentary and experimental modes, testing the image for what it tells us about ourselves – our past and how we imagine it in pieces and textures.  Often in Araneda’s work, a fragment of a word or an image or a colour – red, for example - triggers an associational process of remembrance.  To live with images which linger after the moment has passed: the signs of a presence and an absence.  How we remember, how we forget, and the role of the image in stasis and unpredictable movement – these are the motors and the enduring questions of Cecilia Araneda’s memory work in film.

Cecilia Araneda will be in attendance to introduce and discuss her work.