Jul 14, 2017
The Winnipeg Film Group is pleased to announce that Cecilia Araneda is the recipient of the 2017 Manitoba Film Hothouse Award.
The Hothouse Award recognizes the career of an established Manitoba filmmaker. It comes in the form of $10,000 in cash and $5,000 in production services to support ongoing development work leading towards the production of one or several film productions or projects. The award will support Araneda in her self-directed research and development work for her highly process-based film practice, which is strongly rooted in analogue experimentation.
To-date, Araneda has completed 14 short films and videos which have won awards and screened in festivals, curated program and art house cinemas internationally. Among the festivals that have featured Araneda’s work are Visions du Réel, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, Images Festival, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma and the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano.
In 2010, Araneda’s work was the subject of a retrospective screening at the Canadian Film Institute in Ottawa. In 2011, she was recognized by the Government of Manitoba for her work as a woman artist working for social change. In 2017, she was the recipient of the inaugural LIFT: Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto Roberto Ariganello Award, supporting the work of an established Canadian artist working in analogue forms. In 2017, she was additionally the recipient of an international curatorial research award from the Canada Council for the Arts to support her study of artist-driven Mapuche filmmaking practices.
Cecilia Araneda was born in Chile and came to Canada at a young age as a refugee with her family after they escaped Chile’s coup d’état. She grew up in northern Manitoba and currently lives in Winnipeg. She holds a BFA (hons) from York University and an MFA from UBC. In 2005, Araneda founded, together with filmmaker Solomon Nagler, the WNDX Festival of Moving Image, which has since become one of Canada’s most highly regarded experimental film festivals. In 2014, she co-founded the Winnipeg-based Mujer Artist multidisciplinary Latin women artists’ collective.
“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.” – Scott Birdwise, Canadian Film Institute, April 2010
In conjunction with her Hothouse Award, the Winnipeg Cinematheque will feature a retrospective screening on the work of Cecilia Araneda in the near future.
