Malic Amalya
b. 1980 / Burlington, Vermont
living and working in the Greater Boston Area
malicamalya at gmail dot com
Artist Statement
Visceral and cacophonous, my films traverse gritty landscapes of abandoned buildings, blast zones, and back rooms. Situated between non-linear avant-garde traditions, the oppositional and self-reflective aesthetic considerations of queercore, and an intersectional feminist politic, I create single channel and expanded cinema performances across 16mm and Super 8 film, digital and analog video, and 35mm slides. This creative framework is informed by prison abolition, decolonization, anti-racism, gender self-determination, disability justice, anti-capitalism, and climate justice.
BIO
Malic Amalya’s films and videos have screened in festivals, museums, and queer bars across the world. Festival screenings include Festival Les Merveilles (Paris), Ann Arbor Film Festival, Light Field Film Festival (San Francisco), MIX Copenhagen, the Scottish Queer Film Festival, Cinema of the Dam’d (Amsterdam), EXiS Festival (Seoul), Onion City (Chicago), the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, MIX NYC, and the TIE Cinema Exposition (Milwaukee & Montreal). Museum exhibitions include the Transgender Museum of Art and Herstory exhibition at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon and the Museum of Northwest Art in Washington State. Visuals for dance nights at queer bars include “Buttcocks” at Club SchwuZ in Berlin, Germany, “Trqpiteca” at Danny’s in Chicago, and “Other Stranger” at The Stud in San Francisco.
In 2020, Malic’s film RUN! won an Honorable Mention at the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival. Magnetic Resonance won an Audience Choice Award in the 2016 San Francisco Cinematheque’s Crossroads Artist-Made Film and Video Festival and Gold Moon, Sharp Arrow won Best Experimental Film in the 2012 Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival in Portland, OR. In 2014, the SF Bay Guardian honored Malic with a GOLDIE Award for Film.
Since 2014, Malic has been collaborating with musician and video artist, Nathan Hill, under the name Vitreous Chamber. They co-direct, as well as provide integral technical support on individually directed projects. Malic and Vitreous Chamber have had solo screenings with Collectif Jeune Cinema (Paris), Shapeshifters Cinema (Oakland), Microlights (Milwaukee), the Nightingale (Chicago), and the Queen’s Vernacular (Bellingham, WA). Malic and Nathan were Affiliate Artists at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA in 2019-2020 and resident artists at Signal Culture in Owego, New York in 2018.
Malic has also been a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont and Blue Sky Project in Dayton, Ohio. Malic has received grants from the Northwest Film Forum and the Jack Straw Studio Center in Seattle to make his 16mm film Drifting, and a Faculty Development Grant from the California College of the Arts to finish his 16mm film RUN!
In curating INFRARED: NEW VISIONS FROM THE QUEER UNDERGROUND, Malic programs a mixture of formal and conceptual work with explicitly politically engaged experimental films from underrepresented queer and trans voices. From 2011 - 2016, INFRARED screened annually at Twist: the Seattle Queer Film Festival. The program also traveled to the Cinema of Gender Transgression at Anthology Film Archives (2019), the Gender in Translation Symposium at the California College of the Arts (2016), Trans-Ocular: New Perspectives in Transgender Art, Media, and Politics at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2013) and Radically Gay: The Life and Visionary Legacy of Harry Hay at New York University (2012). In 2018, the San Francisco Cinematheque invited Malic to curate a special edition of INFRARED to honor the San Francisco Compton Transgender District, where the Cinematheque offices are located.
Malic Amalya is an Assistant Professor of Experimental Media and Filmmaking at Emerson College in Boston, MA. Before joining Emerson College, Malic was an Adjunct II Professor at the California College of the Arts, an Instructor in the Cinema Department at the City College of San Francisco, and an Instructor in the Public Education department at the San Francisco Art Institute. Malic holds an MFA in Moving Image from the University of Illinois, Chicago; a MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art from the San Francisco Art Institute; and a BA from Hampshire College.
Malic lives and works occupied territory of the Massachusett, Pawtucket, and Naumkeag people, whose lives, land, and names were stolen by white colonial settlers. He recognizes the ongoing violence of colonialism and supports Land Back and Indigenous-led climate justice movements.