Mariangela Pluchino

Mariangela Pluchino (b. 1991 in Maracay, Venezuela), is a psychologist and filmmaker. After finishing her studies to become a psychologist from the University of Costa Rica, she transitioned to audiovisual media through a master in Documentary Filmmaking from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her visual essay, Infinite Galatée (Galatée à l’infini, 2017) showcases the model of man’s experiments on the female body in privilege and power through time. From Greek mythology, to Victorian gynecology, to current AI technology, we see how gender, sexuality and desire have been ideologically shaped to fit a male fantasy. This film was awarded and screened in several international film festivals such as the International Festival of Documentary and Short Film of Bilbao, Cartagena film festival, DokumentART, Hot Docs Canada, Documenta Madrid, DokumentART, Barcelona Independent Film Festival l’Alternativa, and Reina Sofia Museum, among others.

Mariangela wrote and directed her first short fiction film, Leonarda-Flesh Ain’t Weak (Finland, 2020), which premiered at the Helsinki International Film Festival Love & Anarchy and is available in Yle Areena, the Finnish National Public Broadcast Channel. She works mainly as a videographer for dance and performance, and is the production coordinator of Academy of Moving People and Images, a filmmaking learning platform for mobile people – those who have arrived in Finland for different reasons; be they displaced people, forced immigrants, students, asylum seekers, or employees. Mariangela’s work is framed within an intersectional queer feminist approach.

During her residency at Saari, Mariangela plans to write the script and do production duties for a short fiction film. Mariangela Pluchino (1991), Born and raised between Venezuela and Costa Rica, is a Helsinki based video and filmmaker with an academic background in psychology.