About

Bio

Juan Carlos Zaldivar (he/they)

• completed both a BFA and a Masters of Fine Arts at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and currently serves as professor in the Media study Department of the College of Arts and Sciences at The State University of New York at Buffalo.

• participated in the 2019 class at La Biennale di Venezia College Cinema to develop a feature-length art film which has also received the support of the Sundance Writers Lab and Locarno Open Doors.

• Zaldivar's company, Phonograph Films is also developing a cross-platform project that reframes how we are presently looking at dementia, which includes a limited series podcast, a documentary and a VR community screening tour with the support of The Warhol Foundation through Locust Projects in Miami, Oolite Arts, Latino Public Broadcasting and other grants.

• associate produced the theatrical feature doc "Buena Vista Social Club, Adios" 2017.

• co-produced the VR film "A history of Cuban dance", Sundance & SXSW 2016.

• co-directed the VR doc entitled "SwampScapes" with Elizabeth Miller and Kim Grinfeder in 2018.

• started a film career as a sound editor and designer, and worked on the Academy Nominated films such as "Sense and Sensibility", "On the Ropes," and on HBO's America Undercover, which garnered an Emmy nomination for Best Sound.

• has had video artworks screened at many festivals worldwide and broadcast on PBS, ABC, IFC, Showtime, and WE.

• received numerous grants and awards.

• has served as a Juror for several major film festivals including the Sundance International Film Festival.

• was thrilled to work with Doc Society (previously Britdoc Foundation) as the Outreach Director for their first PanAmerican event, Good Pitch Miami 2017

https://goodprtch.org/events/gpmia2017

• directing credits include "90 Miles" (PBS), "The Story of the Red Rose" (Showtime), "Palingenesis" and "Soldiers Pay'" (IFC).

Artist Statement

Human relationship to physicality is at the core of our work. So are the impermanence, transmutations and transcendences of the physical. I/We apply these concepts to objects, to places and to our own body. The principle of adaptation is also present in our work as it applies to natural survival, as well as human migrations.

What is a video/film? Like humans, moving images mostly depend on a physical apparatus (a body) in order to be seen, and just like human bodies these technologies age and perish. We find it fascinating that even though moving images are created by a series of optical illusions, they are widely accepted as “truthful” in our cultures; so much so, that moving images are often equated with human memories and have become integral to how humans understand, validate, and even create new realities. These values represent a double-edged sword because new technologies are becoming so sophisticated that humans are beginning to confuse what is actual or “real” with various types of refined artificial constructions.

We are interested in the relationship between natural and artificial constructions because these exchanges always trigger larger questions about our humanity, and because a dialogue between these two elements often spins other dialogues regarding identity, history, transculturalism, power and acceptance.

As humans continue to colonize the earth, more and more species will go extinct and many of our physical experiences will disappear, never to be recovered in their original form. Some of our projects meditate on the boundless possibilities --as well as the limitations-- of digital preservation and on the ultimately impossible reconciliation between the limits of human physicality and the uncontainable forces of nature.