Filmmaker Cecilia Araneda was born in Chile, grew up in northern Manitoba and currently resides in Winnipeg. She holds a B.F.A. (hons) in Theatre (playwriting) from York University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (screenwriting) from U.B.C., and is additionally an alumnus of the fabled Film Farm. Araneda has completed nine short films as director and writer, which have won awards and screened in festivals, curated programs and art house cinemas internationally – including in New York, Chicago, Paris, Madrid, Leeds, Cologne, Santiago, Montevideo, Toronto and Montreal. In 2010, Araneda’s work was featured in a retrospective screening at the Canadian Film Institute in Ottawa, Canada.

Araneda is currently Executive Director of the Winnipeg Film Group. She is additionally a founder of and programmer for the WNDX Film Festival, producer of the Gimme Some Truth documentary forum and recently served as editor for PLACE: 13 Essays, 13 Filmmakers, 1 City, on 13 Winnipeg independent feature filmmakers. In 2011, Araneda was recognized by the Province of Manitoba for her work as a woman artist working for social change. Araneda is also a published writer. Her first novel, The Ocean, will be released in 2012.

“Araneda works in video and film, in fiction, documentary and experimental modes, testing the image for what it tells us about ourselves – our past and how we imagine it in pieces and textures. Often in Araneda’s work, a fragment of a word or an image or a colour – red, for example – triggers an associational process of remembrance. To live with images which linger after the moment has passed: the signs of a presence and an absence. How we remember, how we forget, and the role of the image in stasis and unpredictable movement – these are the motors and the enduring questions of Cecilia Araneda’s memory work in film.”

- Scott Birdwise, Canadian Film Institute, April 2010