Anto Astudillo

Movies

How to Make an Avatar & Render my Body
Director
In this two-chapter project I piece together the progression of my HRT process, using voice documentation and virtual scenarios to recognize physical and psychological changes. Both chapters are chronological evidence of a one-year gender-affirming experience dating back to pre-testosterone days, when I first envisioned my nonbinary avatar inspired by my deepest dreams.
Golpes
Director
Golpes is a film that revisits the attack by the Chilean army to the Government Palace (La Moneda) in Santiago, Chile during the coup d'etat on September 11, 1973. Through images that document the palace and its surroundings, bullet marks on nearby walls, and the Atacama desert as a container of a history of disappearances and murders committed by the state, the film draws connections between the army from 1973 and the police force that guards the existing ideals inside La Moneda. The sound and the images are placed in hi-contrast as the boiling discontent outside this building becomes louder
Temple Island
Director
Eddie Martinez is a dancer for Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. In 2009 Pina returned to Chile for her last residency before her passing that June. Eddie and I have continued our friendship ever since bonded by our love for Pina. In 2016, we collaborated on a short dance film. I told Eddie how I wanted to dance with the camera while he moved in the waters of Castle Island, MA. The film was shown as a 16mm projected loop for an expanded cinema event at the Boston Waterworks Museum. After that event I digitized the work print projected that night and created Temple Island, an ode to the body as our motor and our temple.