PENELOPE CORINALDESI
Director, Researcher,
Image-maker and Editor
email: penelopecorinaldesi@hotmail.com
Instagram: @penelope.corinaldesi
I am a London-based visual artist and filmmaker working between documentary, experimental cinema, and research-led practice. My work explores how personal and shared histories surface in urban and domestic spaces. I approach events as existing in an aesthetic realm, using filmmaking, the screen, and other media not only as vessels of transmission but as tools for questioning violence, intergenerational trauma, and the politics of space. Through investigative reconstructions, mixed documentary strategies, and multimedia layering, I attempt to expand what visual media can do.
I studied Social Anthropology (BSc) and City Design (MSc) at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and hold an MA in Performance: Screen from Central Saint Martins (UAL). This academic grounding shapes my approach to film and visual research, allowing me to move fluidly between ethnographic observation, theory, and practice - without ever fully leaving one behind.
CV
TERRAIN FILM 2025
TERRAIN
— 2025
— SHORT FILM
— 09:02
— TRANCOSO, BAHIA, BRAZIL
— DIGITAL VIDEO + SOUND (NO DIALOGUE)
— DIRECTOR + PRODUCER + EDITOR: PENELOPE CORINALDESI
— DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RAFAEL DA ROCHA LEMOS
— ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: NAOMI MELISA GRAIFMAN
— ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: VENTURELLA TORRETTA
— PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS: ISADORA CONSORTI + MARINA BELTRAMI
CAST
— LÁMPPI
— GABRIELA COLODETI
— PAOLO CORINALDESI
— NANÁ LAVANDER
— MÁRCIA REGINA
— CÍNTIO RODRIGUES
— SARITA DOS SANTOS
IMAGE + SOUND
— DIGITAL VIDEO
— LOCATION SOUND
— MOVEMENT-BASED PERFORMANCEDESCRIPTION
Terrain is a movement-based experimental short film set over a condensed period of time in Trancoso, Brazil, where I grew up. Once a small fishing village, Trancoso has seen its relationship to land shift — from soil to property — under the pressures of tourism and real estate. This transformation unfolds through a series of movements and encounters: a male figure emerges from the sea, carrying a banner, and moves inland. The group we follow negotiates its relationship to this banner and to one another, their gestures and formations echoing tensions between belonging, ownership, and change. At moments, their paths and his collide, producing flashes of red — brief ruptures that hint at an uncertain future. The film takes an abstract, corporeal approach, moving through interconnected coastal landscapes where nature, labour, and property exist in fragile balance.