“La ciudad sin ti/The City Without You” (2025)
“Perhaps the love letter is the most intimate object we are willing to share. Feminist writer Camila Henríquez Ureña once described it as “a monologue that aspires to be a dialogue.” In that sense and with that fragmentary nature, love letters then function as social documents. They are also elusive, slippery objects. They resist easy interpretation, and one of the challenges of working with them lies in this resistance: we cannot force them to say what they don’t, nor can we assume knowledge that isn’t there.
And yet, because they exist at the intersection of the personal and the collective, love letters open rich possibilities for connection and imagination. Over the past year, I have come to see them as profoundly generous artifacts, offering not only intimate windows into lived experience, but also multiple entry points for reflection and shared affect when connecting with historical events and the intricacies of memory.”
La ciudad sin ti is an essay film that invites you to see the history of modern Santiago through visual fragments. Archival footage, love letters, and street conversations, reveal how the practice of writing love is tied to memory, place, and resistance in this city.
VISUAL DIARIES - Notas análogas
Wherever I go, whether wandering city streets or pausing in quiet corners, alone and in company of my loved ones, my photographic practice helps me trace the textures of daily life. I embrace these observations as a slow practice; imperfect, unique, intuitive, and playful. I let go of precision and embrace more experimentation, allowing each frame to become a small act of noticing, feeling, and remembering.
No importa mucho a dónde voy. Ya sea recorriendo el caos de las ciudades o deteniéndome en rinconcitos tranquilos, mi cámara me ayuda a trazar las texturas de la vida cotidiana. Me atraen la poesía de la luz y el color en escenas cotidianas. Mi práctica fotográfica me obliga a la pausa. Así se crean imágenes intuitivas y lúdicas. Aquí reniego de la precisión y abrazo la experimentación, permitiendo que cada encuadre se convierta en un pequeño acto de rebeldía, observación, sentimiento y recuerdo.
Selected presentations
“Uses of Found Footage in Documentary Film” – Panel facilitated by PhD candidate in Film and Digital Media, Lalu Ozban, UCSC (July, 2025)
“Trauma and Memory: intimacies found in the archives” - Ethics and Documentary Filmmaking class facilitated by PhD candidate in Film and Digital Media Amy Reid, UCSC (July, 2025)
“Intimate Frames: A Case for Home Movies in Constructing Alternative Histories in Santiago, Chile (1950’s to 1980’s)” Media Fields IX Conference - University of California Santa Barbara (March 2025)
“Imágenes y Dictadura: La poética del Chile desde Adentro” – Imagen e Historia, Universidad de Chile (October, 2022)
Awards, Fellowships and Grants
“Best City Life Film”, Short Film Factory, Bucharest, Rumania (2025)
“Best Woman Filmmaker”, International Film Festival Lulea, Sweden (2025)
Kenneth Corday & Family Endowment in Writing for Television & Film (2025)
Florence French Fellowship - Film and Digital Media UCSC (2025
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The Arts Dean's Fund for Excellence and Equity, UCSC (2025)
Florence French Fellowship - Film and Digital Media UCSC (2024)
Counter Histories Fellowship - Magnum Foundation (2022)
Premio Seminario Simon Collier Instituto de Historia UC (2020)
If you’d like to learn more about my work and my documentary and creative practices, or if you’d like to receive my CV and check out projects not published here, feel free to email me at cata.jeanner@gmail.com.
Si deseas conocer un poco más de mi trabajo y mis prácticas documentales y creativas, o recibir mi CV y ver trabajos que no están publicados acá, envíame un correo a cata.jeanner@gmail.com