Niles Atallah
Birth : , California, USA
History
Niles Atallah lives and works in Santiago, Chile. Born in California in 1978, he is a dual citizen of both Chile and the U.S. He has a B.A. in Art from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Niles works as a writer and director in feature film, music videos, video art work, installations and short films. He also works as a director of photography and created Diluvio, a film production company in Chile.
His first feature Lucía premiered at San Sebastián in 2010. Lucía was awarded the FIPRESCI Critics Prize, Prix Découverte de la Critique Française and Prix Spécial du Jury in Toulouse and Best Director at the Valdivia International Film Festival in Chile. Lucia, Luis y el Lobo, a series of two short films he co-directed with Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña, totaled over 1 million online views.
Writer
The list of fantastic, mythical animals compiled by Carl Linnaeus in his seminal 18th century work Systema Naturae could well be the seed of Niles Atallah’s Animalia Paradoxa – an eccentric tale set in a post-apocalyptic world that follows a strange creature struggling to survive. Dressed in rags and a gas mask, moving like an alien dancer, Animalia roams through an abandoned building – crawling and stretching across concrete, plastic, waste. She laboriously carries and fills up an array of empty bottles to enjoy a modest bath. The camera eye lingers on her with compassion and explores the architectures of trash at an agonising pace. We know in our hearts that Animalia is a human-amphibian longing for the sea…
Director
The list of fantastic, mythical animals compiled by Carl Linnaeus in his seminal 18th century work Systema Naturae could well be the seed of Niles Atallah’s Animalia Paradoxa – an eccentric tale set in a post-apocalyptic world that follows a strange creature struggling to survive. Dressed in rags and a gas mask, moving like an alien dancer, Animalia roams through an abandoned building – crawling and stretching across concrete, plastic, waste. She laboriously carries and fills up an array of empty bottles to enjoy a modest bath. The camera eye lingers on her with compassion and explores the architectures of trash at an agonising pace. We know in our hearts that Animalia is a human-amphibian longing for the sea…
Sound Designer
Several reels of film are buried in a forest in sourthern Chile. Ten years later the films are unearthed from the soil and projected. Ghosts have appeared on the surface of the decaying celulloid, they are the protagonists of Niles Atallah's earlier feature films "Lucia" and "Rey". The fictional characters have returned to haunt the images, peering through the layers of earth, as if interested in us, the spectators who watch them. Who is looking at who? Why have these characters returned? What do they want? The film is a secret code written by the earth itself.
Editor
Several reels of film are buried in a forest in sourthern Chile. Ten years later the films are unearthed from the soil and projected. Ghosts have appeared on the surface of the decaying celulloid, they are the protagonists of Niles Atallah's earlier feature films "Lucia" and "Rey". The fictional characters have returned to haunt the images, peering through the layers of earth, as if interested in us, the spectators who watch them. Who is looking at who? Why have these characters returned? What do they want? The film is a secret code written by the earth itself.
Director of Photography
Several reels of film are buried in a forest in sourthern Chile. Ten years later the films are unearthed from the soil and projected. Ghosts have appeared on the surface of the decaying celulloid, they are the protagonists of Niles Atallah's earlier feature films "Lucia" and "Rey". The fictional characters have returned to haunt the images, peering through the layers of earth, as if interested in us, the spectators who watch them. Who is looking at who? Why have these characters returned? What do they want? The film is a secret code written by the earth itself.
Director
Several reels of film are buried in a forest in sourthern Chile. Ten years later the films are unearthed from the soil and projected. Ghosts have appeared on the surface of the decaying celulloid, they are the protagonists of Niles Atallah's earlier feature films "Lucia" and "Rey". The fictional characters have returned to haunt the images, peering through the layers of earth, as if interested in us, the spectators who watch them. Who is looking at who? Why have these characters returned? What do they want? The film is a secret code written by the earth itself.
Post Production Supervisor
Inspired by real events, “Bestia” enters the life of a secret police agent in the military dictatorship in Chile. The relationship with her dog, her body, her fears and frustrations, reveal a macabre fracture in her mind and a country.
Colorist
Using human corpses and invoking the spirits of two damned Secretaries of State, a girl performs a ritual to free the kingdom of Chile from its feudal heritage.
Director of Photography
Using human corpses and invoking the spirits of two damned Secretaries of State, a girl performs a ritual to free the kingdom of Chile from its feudal heritage.
Script Consultant
A family composed of three generations of women live in an old house in the neighborhood of Ñuñoa. On one hand, Leonor must decide her future, on the other hand, Monica must decide if she sells the house in which they have lived their entire lives while Emilia, must face her Alzheimer’s disease.
Editorial Consultant
A family composed of three generations of women live in an old house in the neighborhood of Ñuñoa. On one hand, Leonor must decide her future, on the other hand, Monica must decide if she sells the house in which they have lived their entire lives while Emilia, must face her Alzheimer’s disease.
Editor
Sound Designer
Director
Director of Photography
Pedro Lemebel, the writer and visual artist, defeated a marginal childhood to become one of the first to shake up Chile’s conservative society during Pinochet’s dictatorship. Dressed in feather boas, stilettos and a sharp tongue, he staged revolutionary performances that defied the era’s terror, he said what no one wanted to hear in a homophobic, repressed and militarized country.
Producer
María, a girl from Colonia Dignidad, in Chile —a kind of sectarian community, tyrannically mastered by the ruthless Paul Schäfer, a German madman, religious fanatic and child predator, who would end up turning the place into a torture center at the service of the military dictatorship ruled by Augusto Pinochet—, is punished for having lost three pigs, so she decides to run away and take refuge in an abandoned house hidden in the forest.
Thanks
Alicia and Damian are ghosts occupying a large empty house on Lake Riñihue. Unable to assimilate their condition as dead people, they wander the house during an eternal day, gradually discovering the rules of this strange world and the reason for their presence.
Screenplay
In the nineteenth century, a French adventurer sets off to establish a kingdom in the inhospitable South of Chile, uniting the feared Mapuche under him. The response of the Chilean army is devastating.
Researcher
In the nineteenth century, a French adventurer sets off to establish a kingdom in the inhospitable South of Chile, uniting the feared Mapuche under him. The response of the Chilean army is devastating.
Executive Producer
In the nineteenth century, a French adventurer sets off to establish a kingdom in the inhospitable South of Chile, uniting the feared Mapuche under him. The response of the Chilean army is devastating.
Director
In the nineteenth century, a French adventurer sets off to establish a kingdom in the inhospitable South of Chile, uniting the feared Mapuche under him. The response of the Chilean army is devastating.
Editor
In his travels through the southern sea of Chile, the privateer Francis Drake discovered a strange island. The extraordinary events that he lived there described in his travel diary have disappeared just like the island.
Director of Photography
In his travels through the southern sea of Chile, the privateer Francis Drake discovered a strange island. The extraordinary events that he lived there described in his travel diary have disappeared just like the island.
Self
Just like in 1985, today Ignacio Agüero is back interrupting filmmakers during shooting, but not to ask what he did thirty years ago, but to find out what is purely cinematographic in what they film. These conversations are related to images in the director's personal archive, as if what is truly cinematographic was found among bits that were never made for the screen.
Director of Photography
Blind and deaf people converse, question, surprise and educate each others. Fingers move about quickly, translation follows promptly, both visible and audible, hands get touched and squeezed, and out of their tactfulness, sentences, stories, reserve and emotions arise
A group of people gather for a family reunion in a house on an isolated island. They are waiting for the last person to join them, but as the evening arrives and he doesn’t arrive, a strange anxiety overwhelms them. The group dismantles and the family members wander away from the house separately, confronting the sea and an unspoken fear that slowly consumes them.
Director of Photography
A man wants to become a TV-star and he will try anything despite his advanced age and what everyone says about him and his lack of talent and charisma for the job. But while he starts getting closer to his goal, his house starts crowding with unwanted guests.
Director of Photography
Lucía is a young woman who works as a seamstress in a factory and lives with her father in an old house in Santiago, Chile. The film occurs in December 2006 during the weeks that take place from the ex-dictator Pinochet’s funeral to Christmas Eve. Through the simple observation of Lucía’s daily life, the spectator is allowed access into a hidden and neglected world of a generation of Chileans striving to recover from the military dictatorship.
Producer
Lucía is a young woman who works as a seamstress in a factory and lives with her father in an old house in Santiago, Chile. The film occurs in December 2006 during the weeks that take place from the ex-dictator Pinochet’s funeral to Christmas Eve. Through the simple observation of Lucía’s daily life, the spectator is allowed access into a hidden and neglected world of a generation of Chileans striving to recover from the military dictatorship.
Writer
Lucía is a young woman who works as a seamstress in a factory and lives with her father in an old house in Santiago, Chile. The film occurs in December 2006 during the weeks that take place from the ex-dictator Pinochet’s funeral to Christmas Eve. Through the simple observation of Lucía’s daily life, the spectator is allowed access into a hidden and neglected world of a generation of Chileans striving to recover from the military dictatorship.
Director
Lucía is a young woman who works as a seamstress in a factory and lives with her father in an old house in Santiago, Chile. The film occurs in December 2006 during the weeks that take place from the ex-dictator Pinochet’s funeral to Christmas Eve. Through the simple observation of Lucía’s daily life, the spectator is allowed access into a hidden and neglected world of a generation of Chileans striving to recover from the military dictatorship.
Cinematography
Director of Photography
Ten segments linked to a primary idea: an evocation of the early cinema images.
Screenplay
Luis talks about his life in the forest and how he fell in love with Lucia.
Director
Luis talks about his life in the forest and how he fell in love with Lucia.
Continuity
The story about Swedish ambassador in Chile - Harald Edelstam - and his heroic actions to protect the innocent people from the execution during and after the military coup on September 11th 1973.
Screenplay
Lucia remembers the summer when she felt in love with Luis and her fear of the dark.
Director
Lucia remembers the summer when she felt in love with Luis and her fear of the dark.
Director
