Malic Amalya

Malic Amalya

Seattle, Washington

Malic Amalya started making videos at a cable access TV station while attending high school in Vermont. In graduate school he shot his first roll of 16mm film and was instantly beguiled by the photographic process of the medium. In both his film and video work, Amalya blends experimental and narrative styles to investigate the ways physical and conceptual structures mediate communication.

Amalya holds an MFA in Film/Animation/Video from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a BA from Hampshire College. Through slippages between abstract and recognizable sounds, forms, signifiers, and stories, his work captures shifts in perception of identity, relationship dynamics, and memory. His films have screened across North America, including in the TIE Cinema Exposition in Montreal, the Olympia Film Festival in Washington State, and the Takoma Park Film Festival in Maryland. He has also presented his work at Yale University and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. In 2009, he received a full fellowship for an artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center and was awarded the Northwest Film Forum’s Out of the Can filmmaking grant.

Amalya currently resides in Seattle, WA with his rabbit Beatrice. For more information about Amalya, please visit: http://malicamalya.com

Blue Sky Insight

The Foxcroft Collective and I created a video installation that uses dollhouses as viewing apparatus to videos that we made together. In the style of Cinema Verite, we recorded themselves, our homes, our families, and the Dayton region with minimal directorial intrusion. By collaborating with the youth and handing the cameras over to them, our project incorporates a more complex understanding of the youth than I alone could have executed.

One of the challenges of working with eight individuals on one project was making our piece visually cohesive. In order to solve this problem, I was continuously trying to accurately articulate my ideas, visual interests, and artistic process. This continuous investigation led me to make deeper connections between my intellectual pursuits, personal experience, and aesthetical investments.

The experience of such an intense collaboration led not only to a successful project, but also to powerful relationships within our collective and the Blue Sky Project community.