Philip Cartelli

History

Philip Cartelli is a moving-image artist and researcher whose film and video work has been exhibited at Locarno Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Visions du Réel, Torino Film Festival, FID Marseille, and Film at Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real, among others. Since 2013 he has also worked as one half of the duo Nusquam with Mariangela Ciccarello. He holds a PhD in Media Anthropology with a secondary emphasis in Critical Media Practice from Harvard University, where he was a member of the Sensory Ethnography Lab, and a PhD in Sociology from the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris). His academic and critical writing has appeared in a variety of publications and he has presented his practice and research in international conferences and other venues. He has received fellowships and residency grants from the Fulbright-Institute for International Education, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, Fondazione Zegna, The Camargo Foundation, The Valletta 2018 Foundation, Roberto Cimetta Fund, and Film Study Center at Harvard University, among others. He is currently Assistant Professor of Film and Chair of the Department of Visual Arts at Wagner College in New York City as well as a member of the Comité du film ethnographique in Paris.

Movies

France
Director
"The four corners of the hexagon." The essence of a well-known polygon, its applications and appropriations, are explored through geometry, history and cinema. Polygons are everywhere, or, rather, everywhere is a polygon.
Sublunary
Director
A young woman investigates an island’s geologic specificity, discovering hidden strata where history and memory meet barely submerged narratives of displacement and imaginaries of possible futures.
Lampedusa
Director
Combining high definition and Super 8 footage, Lampedusa is composed of interwoven narratives based on a series of real events. In 1831, a volcanic island suddenly erupted from the sea a few kilometers off the southern coast of Sicily. An international dispute ensued, as a number of European powers laid claim to this newfound “land”. The island receded below sea level six months later, leaving only a rocky ledge under the sea…
Lampedusa
Sound Director
Combining high definition and Super 8 footage, Lampedusa is composed of interwoven narratives based on a series of real events. In 1831, a volcanic island suddenly erupted from the sea a few kilometers off the southern coast of Sicily. An international dispute ensued, as a number of European powers laid claim to this newfound “land”. The island receded below sea level six months later, leaving only a rocky ledge under the sea…
Lampedusa
Editor
Combining high definition and Super 8 footage, Lampedusa is composed of interwoven narratives based on a series of real events. In 1831, a volcanic island suddenly erupted from the sea a few kilometers off the southern coast of Sicily. An international dispute ensued, as a number of European powers laid claim to this newfound “land”. The island receded below sea level six months later, leaving only a rocky ledge under the sea…
Lampedusa
Cinematography
Combining high definition and Super 8 footage, Lampedusa is composed of interwoven narratives based on a series of real events. In 1831, a volcanic island suddenly erupted from the sea a few kilometers off the southern coast of Sicily. An international dispute ensued, as a number of European powers laid claim to this newfound “land”. The island receded below sea level six months later, leaving only a rocky ledge under the sea…
Slow Return
Director
A river flows out to sea through a network of wetlands, salt marshes, and petrochemical plants. A melting glacier, its surface covered in protective cloth, still attracts tourists. SLOW RETURN bridges the Rhone River’s extremities, where the natural environment is a resource and commodity, exploring shared legacies of dependence and exploitation embedded in their landscapes.
The Anarchist
Director
Five people are connected through an apocryphal story: a decade ago, a group of anarchists from the U.S. stole Leon Trotsky’s ashes from their resting place in Mexico. This central narrative is articulated through those of a Mexican activist lawyer, a Greek professional couple, a Tunisian journalist and a Kurdish student. Each has some connection to international networks of solidarity and activism, which, for some, are now in the past. Filmed in New York, Marseille, and Athens, their separate recollections converge in a portrait of the tensions between the personal and the political today.