Epitaph

Directed by Cecilia Araneda

In Epitaph, filmmaker Cecilia Araneda returns to her long-estranged homeland, eco-processing 16 mm film with leaves and fruit gathered from her ancestral home, weaving a lament for her family’s past and the vanishing landscapes of home. Filmed in both Chile and on the Tablelands in Canada, a site central to the modern understanding of plate tectonics, Epitaph incorporates eco-processed 16 mm footage, video, documents from public and private archives, and found footage to weave an epitaph to a home in the process of leaving the filmmaker, first as a result of exile and then to the gradual movement of time. Epitaph has been eco-processed on-site in rural Chile at the site of the filmmaker’s father’s family using boldo, figs, fig leaves, walnut leaves, apples, apple leaves, fall grapes, fall grape leaves, olives, olive leaves, plums, mint, yard flowers and other vegetation.