PHILIP CARTELLI is a moving-image artist and researcher whose film and video work has been exhibited at Locarno Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Visions du Réel, Torino Film Festival, FID Marseille, and Film at Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real, among others. Since 2013 he has also worked as one half of the duo Nusquam [+] with Mariangela Ciccarello [+].

He holds a PhD in Media Anthropology with a secondary emphasis in Critical Media Practice from Harvard University, where he was a member of the Sensory Ethnography Lab, and a PhD in Sociology from the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris). His academic and critical writing has appeared in a variety of publications and he has presented his practice and research in international conferences and other venues.

He has received fellowships and residency grants from the Fulbright-Institute for International Education, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, Fondazione Zegna, The Camargo Foundation, The Valletta 2018 Foundation, Roberto Cimetta Fund, and Film Study Center at Harvard University, among others.

He is currently Assistant Professor of Film and Chair of the Department of Visual Arts at Wagner College in New York City as well as a member of the Comité du film ethnographique in Paris.

• Contact [+]
• CV [+]
• Statement [+]
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• FRANCE (with Mariangela Ciccarello, 2022)
  6 minutes | Super 8mm | 1.33:1 | Stereo | Greece, Italy, USA
• "The four corners of the hexagon." The essence of a well-known polygon, its applications and appropriations, are explored through geometry, history and cinema. Polygons are everywhere, or, rather, everywhere is a polygon.
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• SLOW RETURN (2021) | trailer
  80 minutes | HD video | 1.85:1 | 5.1 Sound | USA, France
• A river flows out to sea through a network of wetlands, salt marshes, and petrochemical plants. A melting glacier, its surface covered in protective cloth, still attracts tourists. SLOW RETURN bridges the Rhone River’s extremities, where the natural environment is a resource and commodity, exploring shared legacies of dependence and exploitation embedded in their landscapes. "Without naming it concretely, one of the greatest problems of our time is analyzed audiovisually and mosaically." - ETHNOCINECA
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• SUBLUNARY (with Mariangela Ciccarello, 2019) | excerpt
  21 minutes | HD video & Super 8mm | 1.85:1 | 5.1 Sound | Italy, Malta, USA
• A young woman investigates an island’s geologic specificity, discovering hidden strata where history and memory meet barely submerged narratives of displacement and imaginaries of possible futures. "Finding ways to find new fluency in flux becomes ever more crucial for us all, of course, as we become ever more aware of our own impact on land and sea, and so on the movements of ourselves and of our neighbors. More and more, we see the dangers of cleaving too tightly to any too-static sense of place, belonging, or identity; more and more, we realize the fluidity and mutability of the materials, even of narrative." - Megan Grumbling, THE CHART [+] This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant
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• PROMENADE (2016) | excerpt
  31 minutes | HD video | 1.77:1 | Stereo | USA, France
• “Promenade: the word refers to the action as well as its setting. Here, it consists of a place known as ‘J4,’ a seafront terrace by the MuCEM and its famous architecture. Sequences after sequences, with attentive, precise, remote still frames, and not without a slight touch of humour, Philip Cartelli creates pictures like small paintings humming with a crowd of tourists, visitors, strollers. Seascapes of our time.” - Nicolas Feodoroff, FID-MARSEILLE "Urban design is a form of social engineering. It determines encounters between different groups, as well as creates segregated spaces. Once a major port of arrival, not only for goods from abroad, but also for Amazigh (Berber), Arab, and African migrant labor, as elsewhere, Marseille’s cultural diversity is largely displaced and whitewashed by renewal projects. For anyone those who knew Marseille in the past, the video is an elegy to 'le temps perdu.' Docks are now walkways; warehouses become museums." - Dale Hudson & Patricia Zimmerman, INVISIBLE GEOGRAPHIES, FINGER LAKES ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL [+]
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• LAMPEDUSA (with Mariangela Ciccarello, 2015) | trailer
  14 minutes | HD video & Super 8mm | 1.85:1 | 5.1 Sound | USA, Italy, France
• In late 1831, a volcanic island suddenly erupted off the southern coast of Sicily. A number of European powers laid claim to the newfound “land,” but the island receded six months later, leaving only a rocky ledge under the sea... “LAMPEDUSA juxtaposes wide, luminous digital panoramas with black- and-white Super 8 shots, knitting together an illusory, slippery vision of time and place. ‘What is past?’ Cartelli and Ciccarello seem to ask; the ongoing migrant crisis — where Mediterranean islands play a role of desire, salvation, and uncertainty — undoubtedly imbues this film.”-Jeremy Polacek, HYPERALLERGIC [+]