A suitcase found containing 8mm film shot by his grandfather over eighty years ago is the starting point for a hypnotic journey, where the family archive becomes phantasmagoria. The director encounters his great-grandmother, María Tupper, a visual artist who practiced Rosicrucian exercises, contacted spirits, and even had posthumous lessons with her painting teacher. Through a playful exploration of her archives of texts, drawings, photographs, and paintings, he creates an immersive spiritualist experience.
Cinema was born amidst the spiritualist fervor, and not by chance. Méliès's classic tricks—double exposures, bodies vanishing before the camera—were a way of manifesting the invisible, of going beyond physical logic, but also of embalming time. In 'Maria's Ghosts,' Nico Superby revisits this possibility using a suitcase full of 8mm films shot more than eighty years ago, featuring his great-grandmother, Maria Tupper, a painter and medium. To this silent footage, Superby adds a layer of sound, enhancing its spectral dimension, while the editing takes the form of a séance in which home movies, letters, and diaries speak from another time to the present. A hypnotic journey, where Maria's ways of expressing her spirituality converse with the act of keeping them alive.
Mao Osorio, FIDOCS 30 Programming Assistant
Nico Superby is an artist, filmmaker, and teacher. He studied Film at the Chilean Film School, Art Direction at ESCAC (Barcelona), and earned a degree in Documentary Filmmaking from UAHC. His work focuses on experimental film, animation, and documentary. Notable projects include the video series 'Recetario/Papeles Sádicos' (Recipe Book/Sadistic Papers), created in collaboration with artist Juan Pablo Langlois and winner of the 2012 Altazor Award in Media Arts, and his first feature film, 'Isidora' (2012), about the playwright Isidora Aguirre.