Ruth Somalo
Is a Spanish filmmaker, curator and researcher based in New York.
She is currently a Programmer at DOC NYC and The Architecture and Design Film Festival. As an independent curator she is interested in Cinematic Rituals and emotional experience, the poetics of fragility, and reclaiming a non judgmental non anthropocentric space for emotions. Some of her latest programs include "Absence, space and memory in documentary cinema", “Holy Fluids and Absent Wounds” and “Queer Utopias” (Union Docs) and 2017's Flaherty NYC Winter/Spring Series “Broken Senses” (Anthology Film archives).
Ruth’s latest films are constructed around taboos of the female body, gender specific illnesses and patriarchal structures in the medical establishment, narrative medicine and the economy of death, human remains and experiences of loss. Her work has been shown in theaters, festivals and museums internationally, including the Verdi Cinema Theatre and Contemporary Art Center Matadero de Madrid, San Sebastian International Film Festival, Cinema du Réel (Paris), ADFF (NY), L'Alternativa (CCCB Barcelona), Documentamadrid, MOMA PS1 (Expo1) and at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam (Spanish Cinema Without Fear).
Ruth often collaborates with other artists and filmmakers as a producer, cinematographer and editor; notably she is a Seventh Annual Television Academy Honoree as a producer for the Web series Screw You Cancer directed by Cathryne Czubek.
She also works as a creative consultant and as a mentor and seminar Instructor at UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art and Points North Institute. Ruth is the President of the Flaherty International Film Seminar Board of Trustees and serves in its Programming Committee among others.
Ruth is writing her PhD. dissertation and her current academic research and film project “Mending Objects” investigates the experience of loss in first person documentary and experimental non fiction.
She is currently taking part on a research project directed by Professor Javier Moscoso as a member of the research group Hist-Ex (Anthropology of Experience) at the Spanish National Research Council.
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Select filmography/videography
2020 The Sad Flower
2020 Plant Talk
2020 Memento Mori (While I am still alive)
2018 A Monthly Ritual
2017 Consulta 32 / Hospital Room 32
2015 Eusebio, el Americano / The American: Eusebio
2014 Play Me
2014 Sensorium
2013 71% (selected by MOMA PS1 Expo 1)
2012 Machine for Life
2011 The ancient power of menʼs hands. (Commissioned by Cataloniaʼs Museum of Rural Life)
2010 Till Youʼre Told To Stop: James Blunt
2007 Going Places: Attempting an international mobility biography
2006 Thank you Dr. Gowne
2004 200Km. (member of Discusión 14 collective)
2004 Spanish Eyes
2003 From the Bathtub / Desde la Bañera
2003 Call Center: a new memory / Locutorio: Una nueva memoria
Works in -various stages of- progress
The Tear Project.
Loserville.
Sweeping The Streets.
Utam Uncle.
Selected screenings & exhibitions
Consulta 32: Anthology Film Archives (2020), Zumzeig Cinemas & Cines Zoco (2009), Málaga International Film Festival, Cineteca de Madrid, Alcances (2018).
Eusebio, el Americano/The American: Eusebio, screening at CCCB Museum (L'Alternativa Barcelona) & Directed by Women Spain Festival (BCN - MAD), Festival Internacional de Cinema de València Cinema Jove, The Eye Film Institute (Spanish Cinema without Fear), Amsterdam, 2016 & Alcances: Muestra Cinematográfica del Atlántico, 2015.
Sensorium, Fifth Under the Subway Video Art Night, The ANNEX Art Social Space (NYC), Project Space Kleiner Salon, (Berlin) 2015
Play Me, Architecture and Design Film Festival, 2014.
71%, MOMA PS1 Rockaway Dome (Call for Ideas Winning Proposal) June 2013
Machine for Life, Architecture and Design Film Festival, Seattle Design Film Festival, 2013
Till You're Told To Stop, Documentamadrid (2009)
200KM, San Sebastian Film Festival (2003)
Artist residencies
MOMA PS1, Artist in Residency and screenings of my work as part of the Collective The Colony of Light, 2013.
Audiovisual presentation: Utopia, collective living, death, and dark optimism: Sensorium & The American: Eusebio.
Basilica Hudson, The Colony of Light, Artist in Residency, 2014.
3S Artspace, Portsmouth, NH, The Colony of Light, Artist in Residency, 2015
Hewnoaks artist in residency, ME USA, August 2016.
Awards
Seventh Annual Television Academy Honoree, Series Producer Screw You Cancer, 2014
Director’s Choice Award at the Rincon International Film Festival, 2012
Best International Documentary Award RIFF, 2010
Best European Documentary Award, International Film Festival South Africa, 2010
Best Film of the Festival, Best Documentary, and Best Director award at Tenerife International Film Festival, 2010
Golden Palm Award at Mexico International Film Festival, 2010
Accolade Award of Merit for Feature Documentary, 2010
Best Documentary Script Award at Golden Gate San Francisco International Film Festival , 2005
Barcelona de Cinema Award, 2005.
Official Selections at: San Sebastian Film Festival, Documentamadrid, NXNE, International Film Festival Thailand, Docuwest Film Festival, Tucson Film & Music Festival, Granada International Film Festival, Nashville film Festival, Female Eye Film Festival, Roving Eye-Rhode Island Film Festival, ADFF, RIFF, Sycamore Film Festival, Lifetree Film Festival.