Juana Robles (b. Tortosa, Spain 1983) is an experimental filmmaker based in Dublin, Ireland. Her recent work is focused on analogue filmmaking and the use of 16 and 35mm celluloid film for animation and picture making. Her films center on a personal poetics and the material approach of the medium. Starting points for her films are often remote places and the experiences, inner worlds, spaces and belongings of outsiders. Her urge is to bring their past and present in an immersive space of intangible and fleeting intimate moments.
Part of her practice and main interest is to make experimental cinema more accessible to the public and to enhance the development of experimental film and video forms. Between 2015 and 2018 she worked at the Videoex International Experimental Film Festival and Videocompany, Switzerland. Currently she is working freelance for her fourth year at the Lausanne Underground Film Festival (LUFF), Switzerland as programmer.
Having grown up in Switzerland she holds a MA in Spatial Design from the University of the Arts, Zurich (2014), as well
as a BA in Visual Communication from the School of Art and Design, Lucerne (2008) and attended three semesters a specialist training class for camera, film editing and design at Studio 1 Film School in Schlieren (2016). In 2013 she was awarded interdisciplinary residency at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts in Beijing.
Juana Robles moved to Ireland in March 2019 and is currently a resident of The Complex Art Studios in Dublin.
Malvaceae
The boxes for the return to her home country have been packed for years. They are stacked up around her bed waiting to go. Will she ever know again, if it’s day or night, if she’s awake or asleep, if she’s breaking out or just running into a trap?
Super8-Hd, 10', b/w, 2018
Screenings:
Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival
Istanbul, Turkey
November 13-17, 2019
ULTRAcinema, Guelatao Oaxaca, Mexico
November 20-24 2019
Códec Festival Internacional de Cine Experimental y Vídeo, Mexico City, Mexico
November 27-30 2019
Analogica Selection 9
Bolzano, Italy
December 4-8, 2019
Short Film Factory
Bucharest, Romania
December 22, 2019
International Experimental Film Festival Videoex
Zurich, Switzerland
May 25 / June 2, 2019
BBB
Experimental animation created by painting directly onto 16mm film. The flickering signs and textures dance to
Nicole Paris beat-box You Tube battle with her mentor and father Edward Cage.
16mm-Hd, 2', b/w colour, 2019
Screenings:
Les inattendus Film Festival
Lyon, France
February 14-22, 2020
Pugnant Film Series (Winter Edition)
Athens, Greece
February 26-27, 2020
Mallow Chambers
There are eternal chambers of the unspoken where strange mallows grow.
Super8-Hd, 4'30'', b/w, 2019
Screenings:
Vastlab Experimental Film Festival
Los Angeles, California
September 20-21, 2019
Experimentall
Expanded Cinema Festival , Super8 mm edition
Pelotas, Brazil
April 12, 2019
Kinoskop International Festival of analog exp. cinema
Belgrade, Serbia
November 30, 2019
Kino Klub Split
Split, Croatia
February 7, 2020
Honeymoon
The objects around and inside an abandoned caravan in the remote countryside of Ireland live their careless lives after their owners time stood still.
Super8-Hd, 3' 45'' b/w, 2019 (unreleased)
Nightshades
Jaap Pieters (The Eye of Amsterdam) started filmmaking in the early 1980s. Since then, he has made hundreds of super 8mm films and taken thousands of photographs capturing what most attracts and fascinates him: the trivial.
Nightshades is a weekend trip from his bedroom and his office in the Cafe Gambrinus in Amsterdam to Katwijk aan Zee. We hear him reading out loud his love letters.
Super8-Hd, 17'38, colour & b/w, 2021 (unreleased)
and a porcelain cat
Walking through the ruined streets and hoses of Belchite and Corbera d’Ebre is going back in the summer of 37 and 38, when German aviation and Franco's artillery devastated the towns. Today the old towns are a silent witness to the violence and the brutal consequences of Spanish Civil War, they are preserved as a memory of that battles and one of many wars that should never have happened.
Super8-Hd, 4'20, b/w, 2020
Awards:
Paris Festival for Different and Experimental Cinema
Winner ex aequo Competition 2020
Videoex Experimental film & Video Festival
Winner Swiss Competition 2020
MUFF Milwaukee Underground Film Festival
Honorable Mention Competition 2020
Super Off International Super 8 Film Festival
Honorable Mention Competition 2020
Screenings:
La Inesperada 2021 Festival de Cine
Barcelona, Spain
February 25, 2021
Festival ECRÃ
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
August 20-30, 2020
Videoex Experimental film & Video Festival
Zurich, Switzerland
Sptember 12 & 19, 2020
Paris Festival for Different and Experimental Cinema
Paris, France
October 15-17, 2020
ULTRAcinema
La Joya, Mexicao
November 17-22, 2020
Super Off International Super 8 Film Festival
São Paolo, Brazil
22-29 November 2020
Fisura Int. Festival of Experimental Film & Video
Mexico City, Mexico
November 21, 2020
MUFF Milwaukee Underground Film Festival
Wisconsin, USA
between September-December 2020
BIFF Braziers International Film Festival
Oxfordshire, UK
9-11 October 2020
Cámara Lúcida
Cuenca, Ecuador
November 1-14, 2020
Analogica Selection 10
Bolzano, Italy
December 3-6, 2020
Alternative Film/Video Festival 2020
Belgrade, Serbia
December 9-1, 2020
Broken Screen Festival
Buenos Aires, Argentina
to be announced
Bounty
Catching up with a lost friend in The Reithalle Berne, chasing the lights and thrills of past summer nights.
Super8-Hd, 8'54'', colour, 2020
Screenings:
Peripheries Experimental Film & Video Festival
Boston, USA
April 10-15, 2021
dobra Festival de Cinema Experimental
Saúde, Brazil
September 8-27, 2020
ULTRAcinema
La Joya, Mexico
November 17-22, 2020
Fisura Int. Festival of Experimental Film & Video
Mexico City, Mexico
November 21, 2020
Quiet, Walnut
...accompanies a dear friend through her emotional states during the dying process of her cancer ill mother in Belgrade.
16mm-HD, 8', color/b&w, 2018
Screenings:
South Texas Underground Film Festival
January 26, 2018
dobra Saúde, Brazil
September 20, 2018
Fracto Berlin , Germany
May 25, 2018
Process Riga, Latvia
March 22, 2018