rUN! - Mythography #1
Director / Cinematographer / Editor / Sound Designer: Malic Amalya
Assistant Director / Technical Engineer: Nathan Hill
16mm with optical sound
CLOSED CAPTIONS AND AUDIO DESCRIPTION AVAILABLE
10 mintues
2020
Scientists use natural enemies and poison sprays to destroy these pests. Scientists have found that when we know the life history of a pest, we are better able to control it and prevent it from spreading diseases. “Flies and Mosquitoes,” 16mm educational Film
DESCRIPTION
Shot at sites of nuclear development, detonation, industry, tourism, and activism, RUN! examines the ways that ideologies of war structure landscapes, community rituals, cinematic technology, entomology, pandemic management, and even notions of LGBTQ liberation.
ARTIST STATEMENT
RUN! is a queer anti-war film. I began production on RUN! in the summer of 2017, during Trump’s ongoing escalating threat of nuclear war and shortly after he announced his transgender military ban. While many mainstream LGBT organizations and their allies committed to fight against the trans military ban, RUN! is aligned with radical queer activists who have responded with critiques of the US military’s violence around the globe, destruction of the environment, and the trauma inflicted on service members and veterans
SHOT ON LOCATION
The Trinity Site in the White Sands Missile Range where the first atomic bomb was detonated
White Sands National Park
The edges of the Los Alamos National Laboratory
The abandoned Black Hole Museum of Nuclear Waste founded by anti-bomb activist Ed Grothus
The perimeter of the decommissioned Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant
AWARDS:
HONORABLE MENTION from festival judge Emily Eddy | Milwaukee Underground Film Festival | 2020
FILM SCREENINGS:
ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL | Ann Arbor, Michigan | 2021
EUROPEAN CINEMA FESTIVAL l Madrid, Spain | 2020
CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL | Chicago, Illinois | 2020
ENGAUGE EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL | Northwest Film Forum | Seattle, Washington | 2020
MILWAUKEE UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL | Milwaukee, Wisconsin | 2020
TRANS STELLAR FILM FESTIVAL | Detroit, Michigan | 2020
LIGHT FIELD l The Lab | 2020 - Canceled
WICKED QUEER: BOSTON’S LGBT FILM FESTIVAL | Boston, Massachusetts | 2020
THAT ONE FILM FESTIVAL | Muncie, Indiana | 2020
THE EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL | Tulsa, Oklahoma | 2020
IOWA CITY INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL l | Iowa City, Iowa | 2020
TRMF EXPERIMETNAL COMPETITION | 2020
SAN FRANCISCO TRANSGENDER FILM FESTIVAL | Roxie Theater | November | 2019
Made with the generous support of the California College of the Arts’ Provost Faculty Development Grant.
Post-production completed at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California.
THE MYTHOLOGY FILM SERIES
Malic Amalya’s mythology films are three 16mm experimental-documentaries: RUN! (2020), Living Lessons in the Museum of Order (2023), and First Breath on Mars (2025). Inspired by French semiologists Roland Barthes’ analysis in Mythologies (1957), each film unearths – and untethers – tacit social values embedded in specific locales within the United States.
Using a collage-like editing style, original documentary footage merges with archival footage, scripted scenes, and abstract images. These visual and audio amalgamations create aesthetic, emotional, and ideological connections across seeming disparate historical landmarks, national monuments, and tourist attractions. This non-linear approach to documentary formally reflects an intersectional trans feminist analysis rooted in decolonization, prison abolition, anti-war activism, and environmental justice.
The first film in the series, RUN! (2020), traces how technologies of war structure landscapes, technological advancement, community rituals, entomology, pandemic management, and even notions of LGBT liberation. RUN! includes documentary and scripted scenes from sites of nuclear industry in New Mexico, as well as a reenactment of queer filmmaker Jack Smith’s Song for Rent (1969).
The second mythology, Living Lessons in the Museum of Order (2023), was filmed primarily at and around Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay and SeaWorld San Diego. The film surveys the carceral logics of tourism in an age of mass incarceration and mass extinction.
The third mythology, First Breath on Mars, investigates colonialist ideologies through aerodynamic, mechanical, and ballistic flight. Inside the Earth’s atmosphere, the film chronicles development of ornithology in the United States. Outside the Earth’s atmosphere, the film probes dreams of and developments in space colonization.