Eduardo Menz
Chile / Montreal
In 2020, Cecilia Araneda spoke with Eduardo Menz as part of a multi-year curatorial research project on Latin Canadian cinema. This is a brief extract of her research.
Eduardo Menz was born in 1977 in Edmonton, to Chilean parents. He moved to Montreal in the early 2003 to pursue filmmaking studies at Concordia University and remained in the city. He is a member of the renowned Double Negative Collective, a group of Concordia filmmaking alumni who engage in collective support for experimental film production and presentation. Menz’s works have been presented at the Anthology Film Archives, TIFF and Locarno among countless other venues and festivals internationally. His works transgress and interweave the boundaries of what defines fiction, documentary and experimental film genres. | Vitheque
Research Notes
Eduardo Menz is an unexpected filmmaker. Working within a renowned experimental filmmaking collective focused on abstraction, Menz makes live action dramas, works in video forms and resides within structure.
Menz was born in 1977 in Edmonton to Chilean parents originally from the south of Chile. His father was jailed for a few days in 1975 for his political leanings, and that was enough to scare the family to leave the country, for it was common for people to continue to be picked up over and over again during the dictatorship until they were finally killed. The family was then his parents and older sister; Menz would be born shortly after he family settled in Canada. Although they entrenched themselves into the Chilean community in Edmonton, where the rest of his family still lives to this day, Menz always knew it would be impossible for him to stay there. He had a dream one day that he would either end up living in Istanbul or Montreal, and so headed to the first stop east.
As a filmmaker, Menz will work in any form, including experimental, documentary and live action fiction, though it is the latter for which he is most well-known for. Menz describes himself as an addict for structure, and weaves his works around highly conceptual, pre-designed works that spin around repetition. All of his works follows tight plans, with editing workflows that tend to be mechanical in nature and not a significant artistic work stage, unlike what is common to experimental filmmaking. His works are often choreography-based, reflecting an interest in how the body interacts with media and technology. He consciously works at how to integrate the viewer into the film, playing with expectations and making the audience have to work to understand what is happening.
Menz is currently writing a feature film script.
Filmography
- we are all made of stars – 2016 – HD – 5 min (commissioned by Festival du Nouveau Cinéma)
- YOU CAN TAKE THE STREETS AND RULE THEM BECAUSE WE ARE OF THE SKY – 2015 – HD – 13min
- not with a bang but a whimper – 2013 – HD – 1 min (commissioned by CQAM)
- P.O.P. – 2013 – Super 8mm – 3 min
- Acrobat – 2012– 16mm on DCP – 29 min
- A Film Portrait on Reconstructing 12 Possibilities that Preceded the Disappearance of Zoe Dean Drum – 2011 – 35mm – 5.1 surround sound – 11 min
- Time for Airports – 2009 – HD video installation – 5.1 surround sound – 16 min
- IF IT IS SO/TO BE SO IN/GO IN TO IT/AS IT IS SO/IT IS IN US/IS IT AS IF/IT IS OF ME – 2008 – 16mm film loop installation
- fracas – 2007 – Digital8 – 5 min
- Una Frágil Transición (A Fragile Transition) – 2007, miniDV – 7 min
- because we didn’t find what we were looking for what we found did not exist without us – 2007 -16mm loop installation
- Mechanism/Organism – 2006 – 16mm – 7 min
- Las Mujeres de Pinochet (Pinochet’s Women) – 2005 – Digital8 – 12 min