Parangolé, 2023

color, sound, 3:00, 16mm cameraless film

An experiment in film-as-membrane. A rainy morning in Rio de Janeiro becomes a memory veil imprinted through movement. The body and the environment converge, dissolving the distance between the screen and the skin.

"What makes Parangolé unique is Meza’s use of rhythm, with marks moving around inside the image and the larger composition pulling in and out of the celluloid space" Michael Sicinski, In Review Online

"Descending from Nam June Paik’s Zen for Film, the work achieves a radical parity between sound and matter; Meza’s brushstrokes are of the body of the film, possessing a naturalness analogous to the rain and the Portuguese voices recorded in Rio de Janeiro." Pablo Gamba, Los Experimentos

"Meza’s films distill the disruptive and liberatory energy of Oiticica’s Parangolés into a frenetic cinematic dance - an agitation of colors, scratches, and stains that creates a Dionysian hum consuming everything in its path." Ronnie Yates, Glasstire

"The poetic license to flow in another river, to wear the parangolé of another city’s urban sound — Rio — in a camera-less cinema, cocoon-like matter, filmic matter, the skin of the river. Time and the river. Silence and sound." Duo Strangloscope

Selected Screenings, Installations & Awards

World / South American Premiere: 9th NodoCCS, Galería elRAiSE, Caracas

North American Premiere: Brooklyn Film Festival

European Premiere / Installation: Rare Effect, Lisbon

Official Selection: art + film + vienna

Official Selection: Light Matter, Buenos Aires

Official Selection: Revolutions per Minute (RPM), Boston

Official Selection: Strangloscope, Brazil

Official Selection: Stuff MX, Mexico City