SHIFT by Jaun Carlos Zaldivar and Phonograph Films

After a short summer hiatus, our film nook returns to kick off the fall semester with an amazing film short by Juan Carlos Zaldivar. The film will be showing through September.

Cuban-born, Zaldívar lives and works in the United States. Zaldivar completed both an BFA and a Masters of Fine Arts at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and also taught as an adjunct faculty there. He is tenured as full-time faculty at Miami International University's Institute of Art and Design. Zaldivar started a film career as a sound editor and designer, and worked in Academy Nominated films such as Ang Lee's "Sense and Sensibility;" "On the ropes" and on HBO’s America Undercover, for which he garnered an Emmy nomination.

He has had video art works  screened at many festivals worldwide and broadcast on PBS, ABC, IFC, Showtime and WE. Zaldivar has also  received numerous grants and awards. His directing credits include "90 Miles" (PBS), "The Story of the Red Rose" (Showtime), "Palingenesis" and "Soldiers Pay" (IFC), co-directed with David O. Russell (Three Kings, The Fighter) and Tricia Regan (Autism, the musical). Zaldivar  has served as a Juror for several mayor film festivals including the Sundance International Film Festivaland is a Sundance Film Institute alumnus.

He recently tenured with Doc Society (previously Britdoc Foundation) as the Outreach Director for Good Pitch Miami 2017 https://goodpitch.org/events/gpmia2017;  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); is currently touring "SwampScapes” a VR experience with Elizabeth Miller and Kim Grinfeder; and is producing Phonograph Films' first fiction feature film.

ARTIST STATEMENT
My film and visual art projects explore the transformation of physical form --and our perceptions of it. My work is often interactive. I am interested in the relationship between nature and artificiality because it often triggers larger questions about our humanity.

I do experiments with light, sound and kinetics, which are what films and videos are made of. I do this because film and video are optical illusions, yet they are widely accepted as veridic or “truthful” in our culture and have become an integral to how we understand and create our reality. My work explores the tension between reality (which may be subjective and often relates to perception) and actuality (which often relates to the effect of actions of a body in existence). I find that a dialogue between these two elements often spins other dialogues regarding identity, history, transculturalism and acceptance at large.

I apply these notions to places and bodies as well. I believe that humor is often the best tool to communicate complex ideas and concepts. I like loose narratives. I love Butoh dance and time-lapse animation (both of which deconstruct movement and time, respectively). I respect the defining properties of negative space and the invisible. This includes sound and magnetism, which often create fantastic and bewildering effects.

I worked as a sound editor and designer for many years. I often do not use sound in my video
installations, but when I do, it is an essential part of the work.

Artist Website here and here