Leonardo Pirondi

“Breaking Myths” aims to open the world’s eyes to the fragile and “catastrophic masculinity” of Brazil’s current President Jair Bolsonaro, a fanatical far-right politician who can best be described as the Brazilian Donald Trump — and who is up for a second term this October. The story is told through the lens of the critically acclaimed Brazilian filmmaker and LGBTQ activist Fernando Grostein Andrade (“Abe” Sundance 19), who directed, wrote, and produced the feature alongside creative partner Fernando Siqueira as the first release under his production company in California, FilmSoul Studios.

A visual accompaniment to Tōru Takemitsu's sonically sparse composition 'Corona for Pianist(s)'. Taking inspiration from the graphic score that interprets notes as circles and dots, the film focuses on the micro, elemental and sensual. Light flickering on water, the patterns of landscape, the movement of hands: here time is slowed and a great sense of focus is thrust upon us.

On an interstellar journey, a group of scientists studies the last living vestiges of Earth. The artificial intelligence, Museo, becomes a portal to the crew’s diaries and a fragmented archive of humanity. On Earth, the one believed to be the last of the humans traverses a ruined planet that is slowly recovering, little by little, from the apocalypse it endured.

In 1934 an experiment by an amateur-scientist couple began. Named after a genus of moths, the Automeris Project placed a group of young children in an enclosed forest, leaving them to fend for themselves. On return visits, the couple presented self-made films, accompanied by live music, depicting the outside world. For them, these images were the perfect replica of reality seen in their expeditions. Nevertheless, the films were carefully framed, edited, and manipulated to induce a transformation and provoke the development of a new society.

An imaginary look back at the present and distant past from the point of view of the year 2049. The return of an exile to Los Angeles decades after social and environmental collapse. He recreates the memories of his past (our present), and imagines the lives of those who inhabited his old apartment when he was gone. His sense of displacement elicits a meditation on place, memory and dream.

Set in the landscapes of Los Angeles, this hybrid documentary seeks to explore harmful cyclical occurrences that exploit natural resources and bring us closer to extinction. Following the discovery of a mysterious metal structure in the desert, this film documents the encased objects found within the structure. This film is made up of speculative recreations of the study conducted, analysis of the found objects, and surrounding landscapes.

A meditation on the relationship between humans, nature, and technology.

Two neighbors bond after a shared traumatic event, a continuous home development creeps into nature's threshold, and a community celebrates freedom. The Instability of Clouds navigates an ecosystem in decay and growth while traversing across its spaces of comfort, spectacle, and disaster. Through the observation and construction of facets within a suburban neighborhood in Southern California, connections between landscape, neighbors, and environment ruminate on the American Dream and its resonances.

This is Mine, This is Yours. Do not take mine and I may or may not take yours. A meditation on the unnatural lines drawn by human beings.

A mysterious encounter in the middle of the forest that continues to repeat itself day after day, endlessly. An infusion like that of a labyrinth of the mind: strange, cyclical events intermingle with novels, short stories, and history, as if in intervals between naps, dreams, and readings during a nameless narrator's period of solitude in a cabin in the woods.

In Stanislaw Lem's book of the same title, a paper-destroying blight obliterated much of Earth's written history—except for what's in the book. In this film, we look at a similar but unmarked future, perhaps one less distant than Lem's 3140s. Amid the rubble of an uncertain setting, the narrated soundtrack reads from the last surviving parts of some bound pages, perhaps a reporter's notebook, a dream diary, or a book manuscript.

In Search of Mount Analogue journeys through ocean and land, bringing life to the imagined, metaphorical, and mysterious island from the 1952 novel, Mount Analogue, by René Daumal. The film uses 16mm film to capture computer-generated images that create an immersive, but rather odd, landscape of Mount Analogue.

an excerpt of a conversation between James and I during the Fall of 2019 - Santa Clarita, CA

A film that explores the intersection of a virtual and analog image. Through the hand-processed 16mm and 3D simulation, the film questions what remains.

The great voyages to the "New World" were seen as expanding the frontiers of the visible and displacing those of the invisible, therefore maps from that time render the real and imaginary. The film follows a voyage of the Brazilian Military in search of an imaginary island with the same name as their country. In the myth from 1483 Brazil, or Hy-Brazil, is known to exist to the west of Ireland and above the Fortunate Islands. Visão do Paraíso is an examination of the capacity of the human imagination and computer simulations to construct environments. Amidst the fine threshold of the real, simulated, and imagined, the film analyzes the contemporary ideas of virtual reality and their ambition to expand the frontiers of the physical world into a "New World".

Dr. Eva Ray is 90 years old. She lives in a house by herself outside of Philadelphia. Born in former Yugoslavia, her family fled the Nazis and settled in New York. As a biochemist she worked for NASA and retired in her late 50's. She got divorced after 40 years of marriage and spent her time volunteering in local politics. After many years of independence and freedom, she now feels a deep sense of restlessness and finds herself at a significant turning point. Weaving through her memory and her present, she asks herself what she will do next in what she calls her "final chapter."

In a foreign city, a young woman wanders through the night in search of someone from her dreams. Amidst urban structures and encounters with strangers, she may not be dreaming alone.

The rendering of an impeccably constructed computer-generated image displays a disarranged home. Filmed on 16mm and hand-processed, the image is formed through a process that allows imperfections such as hair, dust, and dirt.

This film is an invitation for a new kind of horror film. Partially inspired by Freud's "The Uncanny" and the exploration of the etymology of the words ‘heimlich’ and ‘unheimlich’ or ‘homely’ and ‘unhomely,’ as it directly translates into English. This film looks into a familiar haunted house or, rather, a constructed environment haunted by its creator's ability to remain omnipresent. Designed with dubious goals, this room, or startup screen, is constructed to welcome you to The New Frontier of the digital era.

A cave named 'Gruta de las Pesadillas' was known to be a place whereby entering the cave with a torch or lamp, you would see your darkest nightmares reflected onto the shiny minerals from the inside. I was given access to a written document describing the experience of a man at the cave in 1914. He writes about leaving his house, going to the cave, and his experience there—This film is a visual and sonic recreation of the described event.