I am a filmmaker, researcher, writer on film, and Lecturer of Videographic Criticism (Film Studies) at the University of Leeds.
My recent film and videographic work has screened at Prismatic Ground, Cámara Lúcida, MUTA, Transcinema, UltraCinema, and Frontera Sur, and my writing on film has been published in Senses of Cinema, Short Film Studies, desistfilm, Kino Slang, La vida útil, La Furia Umana, as well as in catalogues and bonus materials for film festivals including Berlinale, Jeonju, and Locarno.
My current filmmaking & research is focused on videographic criticism and experimental cinema. I have recently co-edited a double issue of Academic Quarter dedicated to Academic Filmmaking (articles and video essays), co-authored an article on experimental filmmaking as research, and published articles and video essays in the academic journals Short Film Studies, [in]Transition and Tecmerin. I also made a film titled 1922 using only archival materials about Ecuador’s worker’s uprising that year, screened at Mimesis Documentary Film Festival in 2023.
I published a book about film criticism in Latin America (La crítica es una escuela, UArtes Ediciones, 2022) and another one on analogue and experimental film practices in Guayaquil, Ecuador (Guayaquil en ruinas, Guayaquil Analógico, 2023). I shared my research on Ecuadorian cinema at the Orphans Film Symposium at the Museum for the Moving Image in New York City and the AIM Conference in Portugal in 2024, and published a chapter on amateur film from Guayaquil in the book Small(er) Cinemas of the Andes: New Aesthetics, Practices and Platforms (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). In 2024 I gave a keynote lecture on film collectives and my work with Guayaquil Analógico at the Winterthur International Short Film Festival in Switzerland.
I have also collaborated as a film programmer for international film festivals and programs, including Rialécticas, ULTRACinema México, and Berlin Critics’ Week in 2023, and most recently for the Cinemateca de Bogotá in November 2024 .
Prior to the University of Leeds, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher for the Future of Cinema & the Audiovisual Arts at the Università della Svizzera italiana, in collaboration with Locarno Film Festival from 2023-2025, and professor of Film Studies at the Universidad de las Artes Ecuador from 2017-2023. My Ph.D. is in Art, Literature and Culture from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid with a dissertation on experimental archival cinema.
Contact: [email protected]
SHORT-CUT TO RECENT PUBLICATIONS
ON VIDEOGRAPHIC CRITICISM, VIDEO ESSAYS & ACADEMIC FILMMAKING:
Co-Editor with Catherine Grant and Alan O’Leary, Academic Quarter | Akademisk kvarter, “Academic Filmmaking in the New Humanities: Video Essays,” vol. 28, 2024. https://journals.aau.dk/index.php/ak/issue/view/523
Co-Editor with Catherine Grant and Alan O’Leary, Academic Quarter | Akademisk kvarter, “Academic Filmmaking in the New Humanities: Articles,” vol. 27, 2024. https://journals.aau.dk/index.php/ak/issue/view/522
"Aging Faces, Voice, and Barbara Steele's Revenge", [in]Transition 11(3), Special Issue: Women and Aging, ed. Barbara Zecchi, 2024.
Making Video Essays About Alice Diop, The Video Essay Podcast, May 1, 2024.
ON LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA & EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKING:
Co-Author with Andrés Dávila and Carlos Terán Vargas. "Professor-artist and professor-researcher: Making the case for experimental filmmaking as research in the academic context of Ecuador's Universidad de las Artes", Academic Quarter | Akademisk kvarter, “Academic Filmmaking in the New Humanities: Articles,” vol. 27, 2024.
“Notes Towards a History of Amateur Filmmaking in Guayaquil”, Small(er) Cinemas of the Andes: New Aesthetics, Practices and Platforms, Eds. Diana Coryat, Christian León and Noah Zweig, Springer International Publishing, 2023.
Co-Editor with Martín Baus. Guayaquil en ruinas: Cartografía fílmica de una ciudad, Guayaquil: Guayaquil Analógico/Premio Mariano Aguilera, 2023.
La crítica es una escuela: Conversaciones sobre la crítica de cine en América Latina, Guayaquil: UArtes Ediciones, 2022.
Included in Sabzian's New Book Releases of Autumn 2022. Download book here.
INTERVIEWS WITH FILMMAKERS:
A Cinema of Reparations: Alice Diop in Conversation with Kevin B. Lee and Libertad Gills, Locarno Film Festival, March 15th, 2024.
Locarno 2024: Listening Films: A Conversation with Courtney Stephens, desistfilm, August 22nd, 2024.
Locarno 2024: Entrevista a Klaudia Reynicke, desistfilm, August 7th, 2024.
EXTERNAL LINKS
Guayaquil Analógico
Rialécticas - Jornadas Cinematográficas de Guayaquil
Fuera de Campo Film Journal
[in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies
My recent film and videographic work has screened at Prismatic Ground, Cámara Lúcida, MUTA, Transcinema, UltraCinema, and Frontera Sur, and my writing on film has been published in Senses of Cinema, Short Film Studies, desistfilm, Kino Slang, La vida útil, La Furia Umana, as well as in catalogues and bonus materials for film festivals including Berlinale, Jeonju, and Locarno.
My current filmmaking & research is focused on videographic criticism and experimental cinema. I have recently co-edited a double issue of Academic Quarter dedicated to Academic Filmmaking (articles and video essays), co-authored an article on experimental filmmaking as research, and published articles and video essays in the academic journals Short Film Studies, [in]Transition and Tecmerin. I also made a film titled 1922 using only archival materials about Ecuador’s worker’s uprising that year, screened at Mimesis Documentary Film Festival in 2023.
I published a book about film criticism in Latin America (La crítica es una escuela, UArtes Ediciones, 2022) and another one on analogue and experimental film practices in Guayaquil, Ecuador (Guayaquil en ruinas, Guayaquil Analógico, 2023). I shared my research on Ecuadorian cinema at the Orphans Film Symposium at the Museum for the Moving Image in New York City and the AIM Conference in Portugal in 2024, and published a chapter on amateur film from Guayaquil in the book Small(er) Cinemas of the Andes: New Aesthetics, Practices and Platforms (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). In 2024 I gave a keynote lecture on film collectives and my work with Guayaquil Analógico at the Winterthur International Short Film Festival in Switzerland.
I have also collaborated as a film programmer for international film festivals and programs, including Rialécticas, ULTRACinema México, and Berlin Critics’ Week in 2023, and most recently for the Cinemateca de Bogotá in November 2024 .
Prior to the University of Leeds, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher for the Future of Cinema & the Audiovisual Arts at the Università della Svizzera italiana, in collaboration with Locarno Film Festival from 2023-2025, and professor of Film Studies at the Universidad de las Artes Ecuador from 2017-2023. My Ph.D. is in Art, Literature and Culture from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid with a dissertation on experimental archival cinema.
Contact: [email protected]
SHORT-CUT TO RECENT PUBLICATIONS
ON VIDEOGRAPHIC CRITICISM, VIDEO ESSAYS & ACADEMIC FILMMAKING:
Co-Editor with Catherine Grant and Alan O’Leary, Academic Quarter | Akademisk kvarter, “Academic Filmmaking in the New Humanities: Video Essays,” vol. 28, 2024. https://journals.aau.dk/index.php/ak/issue/view/523
Co-Editor with Catherine Grant and Alan O’Leary, Academic Quarter | Akademisk kvarter, “Academic Filmmaking in the New Humanities: Articles,” vol. 27, 2024. https://journals.aau.dk/index.php/ak/issue/view/522
"Aging Faces, Voice, and Barbara Steele's Revenge", [in]Transition 11(3), Special Issue: Women and Aging, ed. Barbara Zecchi, 2024.
Making Video Essays About Alice Diop, The Video Essay Podcast, May 1, 2024.
ON LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA & EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKING:
Co-Author with Andrés Dávila and Carlos Terán Vargas. "Professor-artist and professor-researcher: Making the case for experimental filmmaking as research in the academic context of Ecuador's Universidad de las Artes", Academic Quarter | Akademisk kvarter, “Academic Filmmaking in the New Humanities: Articles,” vol. 27, 2024.
“Notes Towards a History of Amateur Filmmaking in Guayaquil”, Small(er) Cinemas of the Andes: New Aesthetics, Practices and Platforms, Eds. Diana Coryat, Christian León and Noah Zweig, Springer International Publishing, 2023.
Co-Editor with Martín Baus. Guayaquil en ruinas: Cartografía fílmica de una ciudad, Guayaquil: Guayaquil Analógico/Premio Mariano Aguilera, 2023.
La crítica es una escuela: Conversaciones sobre la crítica de cine en América Latina, Guayaquil: UArtes Ediciones, 2022.
Included in Sabzian's New Book Releases of Autumn 2022. Download book here.
INTERVIEWS WITH FILMMAKERS:
A Cinema of Reparations: Alice Diop in Conversation with Kevin B. Lee and Libertad Gills, Locarno Film Festival, March 15th, 2024.
Locarno 2024: Listening Films: A Conversation with Courtney Stephens, desistfilm, August 22nd, 2024.
Locarno 2024: Entrevista a Klaudia Reynicke, desistfilm, August 7th, 2024.
EXTERNAL LINKS
Guayaquil Analógico
Rialécticas - Jornadas Cinematográficas de Guayaquil
Fuera de Campo Film Journal
[in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies