Melanie Smith

Filmes

Xilitla
Director
Xilitla 2010 examines the legacies of modernism and the incomplete modernities encountered in Latin America, through the relics and ruins of surrealism. Made in collaboration with filmmaker Rafael Ortega, Xilitla is named after a small town in Mexico, the location of a garden created by the eccentric British aristocrat Edward James (1907–1984). James was an important collector of surrealist art, and several works that he owned by artists such as Salvador Dalí and Rene Magritte are now in the Tate collection. He spent much of his fortune constructing the garden between 1960 and 1984. It is dominated by fantastical concrete sculptures and unfinished architectural structures which he built among the tropical plants.
Parres III
Director
Parres is a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City, halfway to Cuernavaca. It is a town in passing that has left immutable and imperceptible traces on the highway. A man clean the paintwork of the screen. The series is composed of three videos.
Parres II
Director
Parres is a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City, halfway to Cuernavaca. It is a town in passing that has left immutable and imperceptible traces on the highway. Parres II is a bucolic self portrait that implements the use of rain that covers the screen, activating the monochrome outside the traditional frame of painting. The series is composed of three videos.
Parres I
Director
Parres is a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City, halfway to Cuernavaca. It is a town in passing that has left immutable and imperceptible traces on the highway. A man paint the screen covering the town. The series is composed of three videos.
Spook House
Producer
Filmed in the white working-class suburbs of Detroit, Spook House reveals a community reveling in the macabre. Front lawns are transformed into cemeteries, kitchens become mausoleums and dismembered ‘bodies’ are prepared for cannibal feasts. Cameron Jamie’s camera tracks the celebrants as the nights become longer and darker.