catalina jeanneret calderón
What moves me is the romance of life, especially the lives of those who are no longer here, yet with whom we still share so much. I usually find this kind of romance in the archives.
romance/rə(ʊ)ˈman(t)s,ˈrəʊman(t)s/noun
a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love.
a quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life.
I.- A city as an archive of love
my love letter to Santiago
my love letter to Santiago
La Ciudad Sin Ti (2025) - Short Essay Film
Santiago, Chile
“ ‘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.”
Archival footage, love letters, and street conversations, reveal how the practice of writing love is tied to memory, place, and resistance in this city.”
An archive of time and matter
experiments in alternative analog processes
experiments in alternative analog processes
still life, wet collodion, November 2025
About
I am Catalina Jeanneret Calderón (Santiago, 1996) documentary filmmaker, photographer and visual researcher. From an early age, the camera became my way of exploring the world and shape inner experiences, relationships, and memories.
My practice centers on an essayistic and sensitive approach to documentary, working with archives, ethnography and personal materials, and observational images to explore love, intimacy, and historical experience. I am particularly interested in how objects, photographs, home movies, and found footage survive their original contexts and can be reactivated through montage and editing to produce affective and collective meanings.
Working across analog and digital formats, my projects move between the personal and the historical, the individual and the collective, treating film and photography as spaces for encounter, care, and emotional transmission.
I am open to collaborations on international research-based and artistic projects.
Education
Master of Fine Arts in Social Documentation
University of California, Santa Cruz (2025)
Diploma in Anthropology and Audiovisual Creation
Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (2022)
Bachelor's Degree in History
Certificate in Photography Aesthetics
Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (2019)
Watsonville Film Festival - Official Selection (2026)
SOBIFF South of Brazil International Film Festival, Official Selection Florianópolis (2025)
Nominee for Best Film Essay Filmhaus Festival, Germany (2025)
Afragola International Film Festival of Architecture and Design - Al di là della visione, Official Selection Italia (2025)
Festival MIRA UPC categoría Ciudad Abierta, Perú (2025)
Festival Emerger, Colombia - Official Selection (2025)
Peloponnisos International documentary Festival - Official Selection (2025)
“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 )
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)
- “Uses of Found Footage in Documentary Film”
Panel presentation, facilitated by PhD candidate in Film and Digital Media Lalu Ozban, University of California, Santa Cruz (July 2025) - “Trauma and Memory: Intimacies Found in the Archives”
Guest lecture for Ethics and Documentary Filmmaking, facilitated by PhD candidate in Film and Digital Media Amy Reid, University of California, Santa Cruz (July 2025) - “Intimate Frames: A Case for Home Movies in Constructing Alternative Histories in Santiago, Chile (1950s–1980s)”
Media Fields IX Conference, University of California, Santa Barbara (March 2025) - “Images and Dictatorship: The Poetics of Chile desde Adentro” Imagen e Historia seminar, University of Chile (October 2022)
- “‘Chile Vive a pesar de Todo’: Discourses Present in the Mega-Exhibition Chile Vive (1987): Mourning and Hopes for the Future within the Cultural Field” International Colloquium Artistic Representations of the Southern Cone, Universidad del Museo Social Argentino, Buenos Aires (April 2021)