Tropical Fractals (Fractais Tropicais)
Leonardo Pirondi
Los Angeles Premiere
- Price
- $12 + $2 Convenience Fee*
- Genre
- Film
- DATE
- OCT 14
- TIME
- WED, 8 PM
- RUNTIME
- Approx. 90 minutes
- COUNTRY
- USA
- STREAM
- WED, 8 PM (PT) (24 hours)
* Discounts available for REDCAT members, students & CalArts faculty and staff
Join the conversation in the REDCAT LOUNGE
About
Fractais Tropicais (Tropical Fractals) depicts environmental collapse and a vision of the post-apocalyptic world. On an interstellar journey, an intelligent system named Museo records the crew’s diaries as Brazilian archivists transport Earth’s last living remnants and their digitized copies. This fractured history of humanity is contrasted with a lone wanderer, perhaps the last man on Earth (played by Ivo Müller), who roams the ruined landscape as it slowly recovers. Shot in Super 16mm, the debut feature film by Leonardo Pirondi (CalArts BFA 22 + MFA 24 in Film and Video) crafts a textured analog visual world in contrast to slick, digitally rendered science fiction visual tropes.
The screening will be followed by a conversation with Leonardo Pirondi and Ivo Müller moderated by Jheanelle Brown.
Fractais Tropicais uses a science fiction premise to explore the insufficient ways we remember a dying world.
—
Filmmaker Magazine
about the artists
Leonardo Pirondi is a Brazilian-Portuguese filmmaker and artist. His works create and inhabit alternate worlds that blur the lines between reality and fiction, challenging conventional storytelling structures. His films have screened internationally at festivals such as the Toronto, Tiger Short Competition, Viennale, Slamdance, Mar del Plata, IndieLisboa, FICUNAM, BFI London, Nouveau Cinéma, Edinburgh, Oberhausen, and Media City among others. His work has been presented in art centers such as the Museum of Modern Art Rio de Janeiro, CCCB, Wexner Center for the Arts, and REDCAT. He has had solo shows at Galeria Mola in Portugal and Spectacle Theater in NYC. Some of his films live in the Cinematheque of the MAM Rio, UCLA Film & Television Archive, James Baldwin Library, and The Film-Makers’ Coop. He holds BFA and MFA degrees in Film from CalArts. Pirondi was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, is a Sundance Institute Fellow, and was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship in 2025. His short and feature films have been supported by the Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual of Portugal, Locarno Residency, Projeto Paradiso, and the Tim Disney Prize for Excellence in the Storytelling Arts.
Photo: Courtesy of Leonardo Pirondi. Still from Fractais Tropicais (Tropical Fractals).
