Notes, Imprints (On Love): Part II, Carmela (2020 )

Alexandra Cuesta

Notes, Imprints (On Love): Part II, Carmela Alexandra Cuesta Ecuador16mm > digital6 min2020

Delicately crafted from autobiographical footage collected over the course of three years, Notes, Imprints (On Love): Part II, Carmela is the second instalment in the artist’s multi-part 16mm film series. The film is a window into personal encounter, and an intimate portrait of the filmmaker’s relationship with her grandmother, Carmela Cuesta Delgado. 

I wanted to approach filmmaking as a ritual of the every day, using 16mm film to record objects, spaces, light; without hierarchy and without thinking of an end product. What began as a spontaneous collection of images, in time became documentation of my private realm, and this practice of daily filming continued for three years (2015-2018), in various cities. This series of films are the recollections, notes and fragments from that period of time; offerings to love and to the act of making. This second part of the series was shot in my grandmother’s house, that same house where she has lived for over fifty years. This film portrait is a song, an ode, a celebration of that space and of our relationship. It is a film that speaks of healing and of home. – Alexandra Cuesta

Streaming Details

This film is available to stream in North America.

Program Partners

This film is co-presented with Kino Rebelde.

Image credits: all artworks, stills, and portraits courtesy of the artist © Alexandra Cuesta and Kino Rebelde. Special thanks to María Vera.

about the artist

Alexandra Cuesta (Ecuador) is a filmmaker and artist born in Cuenca in 1980. Her work combines documentary practices, experimental traditions, and visual anthropology. An observer with a pressing curiosity of the world around her, she is interested in documenting the everyday, the ordinary, and believes that cinema is the vehicle to highlight and transcend the poetics of the common experience. She received a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design (2002) and an MFA in Film and Video from the California Institute of the Arts (2009). Her short and feature films, including Recordando El Ayer (2007), Piensa En Mí (2010), Despedida (2013) and Territorio (2016), have been widely exhibited at festivals, museums, and galleries internationally, including New York Film Festival, The Guggenheim, Cinemateca Nacional del Ecuador, Ci​​néma Du Réel, FIDMarseille, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Festival de Cine Radical, Flaherty Seminar, Havana Film Festival, Art Gallery of Ontario, British Film Institute, Centre Pompidou, Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions, Queens Museum, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Museo Tamayo, Courtisane Film Festival, FICValdivia, Ecuadorian Film Festival in New York, Anthology Film Archives, Image Forum, Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Curtas Vila do Conde, Viennale, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Museum of the Moving Image, and four previous editions of Media City Film Festival, where she was awarded Second Prize (2013). She is the recipient of fellowships and awards including Guggenheim and MacDowell Colony Fellowships (2018). Cuesta was recognized by Film Comment Magazine as one of their 25 Filmmakers for the 21st Century (2010). She lives and works in Quito, Ecuador. 

Artist interview