Filmmaker honored for contributions to community

Silvia Malagrino describes her work as “amalgamating critical thinking with poetry, and metaphor with documentation.”

Filmmaker Silvia Malagrino, a professor of art and design and Guggenheim Fellowship winner, received an Illinois Secretary of State Distinguished Artist Award for outstanding contributions to cultural and community leadership.

Malagrino was honored at a celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month at the James R. Thompson Center last month.

Malagrino describes her work in film, digital video, photography and installation as “amalgamating critical thinking with poetry, and metaphor with documentation.”

She used the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in film to work on “Singing in Darkness.” Made with filmmaker and editor Sharon Karp, the film traces the flight of Karp’s parents from the Nazis between 1938 and 1943, from Austria to France, Spain, and finally America, where they raised their family.

Malagrino received wide acclaim and a CINE Golden Eagle Award in 2005 for her first film, “Burnt Oranges,” a 90-minute documentary on the 1976-1983 dictatorship that led her to leave her native Argentina.

She interviewed torture survivors, families of “the disappeared,” journalists and high-ranking officers of the junta responsible for the crackdown.

“I think my narratives are more along the lines of cinema, with visual and verbal layers,” Malagrino said.

Her work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Milwaukee Art Museum, La Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris and the Fundacao Athos Bulcao in Brasilia.

Malagrino has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, seven fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, and a fellowship from Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women & Gender in the Arts & Media, Columbia College Chicago.