Biography

LEONARDO PIRONDI (b. São Paulo, Brazil) is a filmmaker and artist who lives and works between Los Angeles, Porto, and São Paulo. His films build and inhabit alternative worlds that move between reality and fiction; his filmmaking practice challenges traditional narrative structures that emerge from the fabulation of sociopolitical resonances within culture, history, technology, image-making, and orality. Pirondi's films have been exhibited in various festivals worldwide, including the Toronto International Film Festival, the Tiger Short Competition in Rotterdam, the New York Film Festival, Viennale, Mar del Plata, FICUNAM, BFI London, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Guanajuato, Ambulante, Media City, and many others. His work has been presented in art centers such as CCCB, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and REDCAT. He has had solo exhibitions at Galeria Mola in Portugal and Spectacle Theater in New York. Some of his 35mm films live in the UCLA Film & Television Archive collection, while some digital ones exist in the Cinematheque of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro and The Film-Makers' Cooperative in New York City. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in film from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and is a Sundance Institute Fellow. His work has been supported by the Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual of Portugal (ICA), the Locarno Residency, the MacDowell Residency, Projeto Paradiso, the Allan Sekula Social Documentary Fund, San Diego Underground Arts, and the Tim Disney Prize for Excellence in the Storytelling Arts. He is also part of the board and selection committee for Badam Film and its film development fund.

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