
Elena Duque
Directing
Biography
Spanish-Venezuelan Elena Duque is a filmmaker, curator, writer and teacher. As a filmmaker, she has completed several animation and experimental short films, such as Cómo hacer un fanzine, exhibited in the art center CA2M in Madrid, De cara a la galeria, that premiered in Curta 8 (Curitiba, Brasil), La mar salada, programmed in the festivals Transient Visions (New York), Moving (Kioto) and Florida Experimental Film Festival, Pla y Cancela, selected in Verín and D'A in Barcelona, and in the exhibition Cibermujeres in the Neomudéjar Arts Center in Madrid and Valdediós (2019), part of the Official Section of Punto de Vista Festival in Pamplona, and selected in festivals such as London Animation Film Festival, Les Inattendus (Lyon), Milwaukee Undergrounfd Film Festival and Experiments in Cinema. In 2020, Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles, California, hosted a monographic program of her works under the name "Elena Duque. Who I Am and Why I Make Films". She has also created festival trailers for FilMadrid, SACO and (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico, as well as several music videos and commissioned works. As a programmer, writer, editor and moderator, she has worked in festivals such as Gijón, Rotterdam and Bafici (Buenos Aires), where she edited the book Val del Omar. Más allá de la órbita terrestre in 2015. She has also curated programs for the Images Festival in Toronto, Tabakalera (San Sebastián), San Francisco Cinematheque, SACO (OVIEDO), the Festival de Jóvenes Realizadores de Granada and Cineteca Matadero (Madrid). She currently works as a programmer and catalog editor in (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico in A Coruña and in the Seville European Film Festival. She has collaborated in publications such as Diario Público, Arte Contexto, Caimán Cuadernos de Cine, Lumière, La Furia Umana and CCCB’s blog. Besides all this, she has edited the book 8 super 8, on experimental filmmakers working in super 8, as well as a number of zines on experimental cinema. She has also written the children’s book Fortunata, published by Autoridad Portuaria de Gijón. As a teacher, she has given the lecture “Paper and Scissors Films. Collage and Experimental Animation in Spain” and the workshop “Povera Animation” in Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre (Brasil) Cinematheques, as part of the program of MIRA - Mostra de Novo Cinema Espanhol 2015. She has also conducted animation workshops in CICUS (Sevilla), FIJR (Granada) and in La Casa Encendida (Madrid), and she has taught classes on experimental, animated and non fiction cinema in centers such as Master LAV in Madrid and the Aula Xcèntric in Barcelona.
Known For

Portales follows the course of the Guadalete river in Cádiz, Spain: a catalogue of landscapes that hide other landscapes. A collection of inter-dimensional portals (and postcards). Live action and animation fuse, creating an impossible fauna and flora.
Portals

A brief documentary focused on the history of experimental Super 8mm filmmaking. Prominent figures of the "s8" boom of the 1970s discuss their work and their first encounters with the medium.
A (possible) trip around the world in super 8

No description available.
Ojitos Mentirosos

No description available.
Pla y Cancela

Completed in 2024. 40 sec, Super 8
Las Manos misteriosas

Fruits are one of the good things in life. This film is dedicated to their tanginess and sweetness, a jumpy animation of fruits dancing to the rhythm of the song “El mango” by the Venezuelan singer Jesús Sevillano.
Ñam

Part of the performance Curso de pintura rápida para principiantes
Pintura-acción

Gualterius built a monastery in Valdediós in the 13th century. In Valdediós, there is a wall, there is a horse, there is a path, there is a whole universe. Shot in Super 8 around the Monastery of Santa María de Valdediós in Asturias, the film combines that footage with painted animation and stop-motion collages.
Valdediós

The filmed inventory of a private collection, which can be seen as a dubious art collection, but also as a compilation like those usual in stamp collecting and archeology. Also as a series of objects and documents in the style of memento samples. The emotional catalogue of a life becomes, at the same time, a collectible item in itself.
Private Collection

Elena Duque, Spain, 2016, video without sound, 3 minutes and 40 seconds. A series of animated postcards from Galicia: the white galleries and buildings of A Coruña, the Coruña Marina and its boats, and the nineteenth-century theme park El Pasatiempo en Betanzos.
Postales

The Guadalquivir River complained one morning / I have to decide between Seville and Triana and I don't know how to choose / Oh, if only I could melt mint and cinnamon into one perfume! (“The River of My Seville”, Lole and Manuel)
Menta y canela

A film about the salty Galician sea, accompanied by a medley of barely remembered Asturian sailor songs from a tape by the Luanco’s Bajamar Choir.
La Mar Salada
Music Video for 'El Texu de Bermiego', song included in Montañas LP.
El texu de Bermiego

A leftovers film. Croquette of own and other's super 8 collected over the years and ordered according to color tones and autobiographical adventures. The result of cutting and splicing pieces of film as a soothing action. -ED
MAR DE CORAL

Part of the performance Curso de pintura rápida para principiantes
Naturaleza muerta

Discover geometric abstraction and color with Sonia Delaunay
Para Sonia
Super-8 reel by Elena Duque
Pátio

Part of the performance Curso de pintura rápida para principiantes