Malic Amalya

Malic’s films and videos have screened in festivals, museums, and queer bars across the world. Festival screenings including in Festival Les Merveilles (Paris), Ann Arbor Film Festival, Light Field Film Festival (San Francisco), MIX Copenhagen, the Scottish Queer Film Festival, Cinema of the Dam’d (Amsterdam), EXiS Festival (Seoul), Onion City (Chicago), the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, MIX NYC, and the TIE Cinema Exposition (Milwaukee & Montreal). Museum exhibitions include the Transgender Museum of Art and Herstory exhibition at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon and the Museum of Northwest Art in Washington State. Visuals for dance nights at queer bars include “Buttcocks” at Club SchwuZ in Berlin, “Trqpiteca” at Danny’s in Chicago, and “Other Stranger” at The Stud in San Francisco.

In 2020, Malic’s film RUN! won an Honorable Mention at the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival. Magnetic Resonance won an Audience Choice Award in the 2016 San Francisco Cinematheque’s Crossroads Artist-Made Film and Video Festival and Gold Moon, Sharp Arrow won Best Experimental Film in the 2012 Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival in Portland, OR. In 2014, the SF Bay Guardian honored Malic with a GOLDIE Award for Film.

Since 2014, Malic has been collaborating with musician and video artist, Nathan Hill, under the name Vitreous Chamber. They co-direct, as well as provide integral technical support on individually directed projects. Malic and Vitreous Chamber have had solo screenings with Collectif Jeune Cinema (Paris), Shapeshifters Cinema (Oakland), Microlights (Milwaukee), the Nightingale (Chicago), and the Queen’s Vernacular (Bellingham, WA). Malic and Nathan were Affiliate Artist sat the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA in 2019-2020 and resident artists at Signal Culture in Owego, New York in 2018.

Malic has also been a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont and Blue Sky Project in Dayton, Ohio. Malic has received grants from the Northwest Film Forum and the Jack Straw Studio Center in Seattle to make his 16mm film Drifting, and a Faculty Development Grant from the California College of the Arts to finish his 16mm film RUN!

In curating INFRARED: NEW VISIONS FROM THE QUEER UNDERGROUND, Malic programs a mixture of formal and conceptual work with explicitly politically engaged experimental films from underrepresented queer and trans voices. From 2011 - 2016, INFRARED screened annually at Twist: the Seattle Queer Film Festival. The program also traveled to the Cinema of Gender Transgression at Anthology Film Archives (2019), the Gender in Translation Symposium at the California College of the Arts (2016), Trans-Ocular: New Perspectives in Transgender Art, Media, and Politics at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2013) and Radically Gay: The Life and Visionary Legacy of Harry Hay at New York University (2012). In 2018, the San Francisco Cinematheque invited Malic to curate a special edition of INFRARED to honor the San Francisco Compton Transgender District, where the Cinematheque offices are located.

Malic was the cinematographer for Riot Acts (2010), he feature-length documentary about trans musicians directed by Madsen Minax and distributed by Outcast Films. Riot Acts won Best Documentary at the 2010 Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, the Jury Award and the Audience Choice Award at the 2009 Reeling Film Festival, and Audience Choice Awards at the 2010 Park City Film and Music Festival and the 2011 TransScreen Film Festival in Amsterdam. Malic has worked on set for two of Jennifer Reeder’s short films, Crystal Lake (2016) and Accidents at Home and How They Happen (2008). He also designed the end credits for Criminal Queers (2015), directed by Chris Vargas and Erik Stanley.

Malic Amalya is an Assistant Professor of Experimental Media and 16mm Filmmaking at Emerson College in Boston, MA. Before joining Emerson College, Malic was an Adjunct II Professor at the California College of the Arts, an Instructor in the Cinema Department at the City College of San Francisco, and an Instructor in the Public Education department at the San Francisco Art Institute. Malic holds an MFA in Moving Image from the University of Illinois, Chicago; a MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art from the San Francisco Art Institute; and a BA from Hampshire College.

Malic was born in Burlington, VT. After eighteen years away from the East Coast, Malic now lives and works in the Greater Boston Area.

Malic Amalya is a transgender filmmaker living and working in Boston. His films are situated between formal avant-garde traditions, the anti-assimilation subculture of queercore, and intersectional feminism centered in prison abolition, decolonization, anti-racism, gender self-determination, disability justice, anti-capitalism, and climate justice.

Malic is an Assistant Professor of Experimental Media and Film Production at Emerson College. His films have screened widely and are distributed by Canyon Cinema in San Francisco and Collectif Jeune Cinema in Paris.

Malic Amalya (b. 1980 – Burlington, VT) is a white, transgender filmmaker working across 16mm, video, and performance. His films are situated between formal avant-garde traditions, the anti-assimilation subculture of queercore, and intersectional feminism. His creative framework is informed by prison abolition, decolonization, anti-racism, gender self-determination, disability justice, anti-capitalism, and climate justice.

Malic is an Assistant Professor of Experimental Media and Film Production at Emerson College. He earned an MFA in Moving Image from the University of Illinois-Chicago, an MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art from the San Francisco Art Institute, and a BA from Hampshire College. He was an Affiliate Artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and has been an artist in residence at Signal Culture and the Vermont Studio Center.

Malic’s films have screened in festivals, museums, and queer bars across the world. Festival screenings include Ann Arbor Film Festival, Blonde Cobra Festival (Cologne), Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, Engauge Experimental Film Festival (Seattle), Festival Les Merveilles (Paris), Crossroads (San Francisco), MIX Copenhagen, the Scottish Queer Film Festival, Cinema of the Dam’d (Amsterdam), EXiS Festival (Seoul), Onion City (Chicago), MIX NYC, Light Field (San Francisco), and the TIE Cinema Exposition (Milwaukee & Montreal). Museum exhibitions include the Transgender Museum of Art and Herstory exhibition at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon and the Museum of Northwest Art in Washington State. Visuals for dance nights at queer bars include Buttcocks at Club SchwuZ in Berlin, Trqpiteca at Danny’s in Chicago, and Other Stranger at The Stud in San Francisco.

From 2012 – 2019, Malic was the organizer and curator of INFRARED: New Visions from the Queer Underground, which screened at Three Dollar Bill Cinema (Seattle), Anthology Film Archives (NYC), San Francisco Cinematheque, Gender in Translation Symposium (Oakland); Trans-Ocular: New Perspectives in Transgender Art, Media, & Politics (Philadelphia); and Radically Gay: The Life & Visionary Legacy of Harry Hay (NYC). In 2020, he organized and co-curated the exhibition Resisting Incarceration Culture at the California College of the Arts.

Since 2014, Malic has been collaborating with his boyfriend, Nathan Hill, under the name Vitreous Chamber. They live and work together in Boston, MA.