FILMOGRAPHY
- San Juan, la noche más larga – dir. Claudia Huaiquimilla, drama, 2012, HD, 18 mins – Spanish [view film]
- Mala Junta – dir. Claudia Huaiquimilla, drama, 2016, HD, 89 mins – Spanish
Huaiquimilla caught the attention of international film circles in 2016 with the release of her debut feature film, Mala Junta (Bad Influence). She is the first Mapuche director working in fiction film forms and, as such, is the first Mapuche filmmaker to dramatize the quotidian experience of present-day rural-based Indigenous youth.
Huaiquimilla grew up in rural Chile in the heart of the Mapuche territory and is an alumna of the Universidad Catholica’s film school in Santiago, where she quickly specialized in directing and screenplay writing.
Huaiquimilla’s fiction work shows a strong clarity of artistic aesthetic that consistent from San Juan to Mala Junta. In spite of working in a different genre, Huaiquimilla’s work echoes aesthetic themes visible in the video documentary work of Paillan – with a focus the placement and presence of nature and community traditions, and on humanizing the Mapuche. Huaiquimilla, in particular, focuses on the contemporary rural experience that is immediately familiar to any Chilean from the centre-south of the country.