Sofía Velázquez is a Peruvian independent filmmaker, editor, and writer. She is interested in small, everyday stories that speak to the human condition and includes poetry in her work because it is, as she puts it, “at the same time disorder, intersections, loose ideas, desire, wonder, simplicity, and a lot of play.”
Her work has been screened at exhibitions and festivals such as Mar del Plata, Málaga, Neighboring Scenes, and platforms such as Aashara - Contemporary Artistic Practices. Her latest film, About Everything There is to Know (2021), won a Special Jury Mention at Mar del Plata, Best International Film at DocBahía, and was part of the 20 best Latin American films for Cinema Tropical in 2022.
As a member of the Mercado Central Collective she has organized and worked in collective projects such as “From the inside: Audiovisual stories of female subjectivities in confinement spaces;” Hilando Miradas, the first audiovisual residency for women in Puno; and QAWASPA KUTIPAY organized by the Peruvian Collective Chola Contravisual. She is a Fellow of MacDowell, Union Docs, and Yaddo, and is about to finish her new film The Colloquium of the Birds.
In 2022, Velázquez arrived at MacDowell with a digital audiovisual archive that she intended to turn into an essay film. During the residency, that material became a device to create a new film project built from a process of writing, editing, and structuring.
During her 2024 residency, Velázquez worked on a joint project with Fellow Carine Doumit. They met two years ago at MacDowell, and based on correspondences, similarities in their artistic practice and aesthetic, and political exchanges, they decided to collaborate. For three weeks, they worked on texts, archive images, and playful research into montage. Their presentation consisted of a collective reading among Fellows of any kind of text, sound, or songs in any language as a way of sharing the creative process in terms of accumulation, rhythm, superimposition of layers, and the possibilities of encounters and mis-encounters based on languages.
Portrait by Jao Yamunaque
