Cecilia Cornejo
Northfield, MN
Filmmaking
Cecilia Cornejo is a Chilean-American documentary filmmaker, artist and educator based in Northfield, Minnesota, the occupied ancestral land of the Wahpekute Band of the Dakota Nation. Locally rooted yet globally minded, her work examines notions of belonging and the immigrant experience while exploring the traces of historical trauma on people and places. Her upbringing under dictatorship in her native Chile led her to develop an artistic practice that encourages community members to reflect in order to envision and generate paths toward collective wellbeing.
Since moving to Northfield in 2010, Cecilia has produced two feature-length documentaries in close partnership with underrepresented groups in town, Making Noise ~ The Story of a Skatepark (2016), developed with the local skateboarders, and Ways of Being Home ~ Between Northfield & Maltrata (2020), produced in collaboration with the Latinx community of Northfield. Her latest explorations, The Wandering House and The Embroidery Project, have sparked collaborations with individuals and organizations inside and outside of Northfield and expanded her practice beyond filmmaking.
An inaugural recipient of the 2020 McKnight Fellowship for Community-Engaged Artists, Cecilia’s work has received support from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council, the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, and more recently from Forecast for Public Art. Her film work, currently distributed by Women Make Movies, has shown at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight, Arsenale (Germany), L’Alternativa (Spain), InVideo (Italy), the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival, the Festival Internacional de Documental de Buenos Aires, and multiple other venues, locally and abroad. Her multimedia work is shown in galleries and alternative art spaces and is currently on view at the Rochester Art Center. In addition to her artistic practice, Cecilia teaches filmmaking at Carleton College and is an Artist Consultant with Springboard for the Arts.
While in residency at Ragdale, Cecilia will work on Sonic Landscapes of Southern Minnesota, a sound-mapping website and interactive web archive that honors the vibrant complexity of rural places.