About
My name is Catalina Jeanneret Calderón (Santiago, 1996) and I am a documentary filmmaker, photographer and visual researcher. Ever since I was a kid, my camera has been my way of exploring the world and shaping my inner experiences, relationships, and memories.
I work with both analogue and digital formats, and my projects blend the personal with the historical, the individual with the collective. I use film and photography to explore emotional and human connections.
My work is all about blending an essayistic and sensitive approach to documentary, using archives, ethnography and personal materials to explore love, intimacy and historical events. I am really interested in how objects survive in their original contexts and can be brought back to life through conversations and film techniques to create meaning.
I'm up for working 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)