Melina Pafundi was born along the Atlantic coast in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Very early in her life, through the influence of the International Film Festival, she discovered the power of images in and beyond the cinema space. It was this relentless passion for film that led her, at age 19, into formally studying Film Direction, Philosophy and Fine Arts. It was also at this time that she began her studies of the German language. Soon after, she started working on the restoration and cataloging of a film collection in the Pablo D. Hicken Film Museum in Buenos Aires. Due to the political nature of this particular catalogue, to which the institution still does not allow access or publication, she also began to develop a political consciousness explicitly linked to the aesthetics of images, and to the power of ideas as a Body inside or outside the public space.
In 2016, Melina made the choice to escape the triumph of neoliberalism in Argentina by moving to Berlin. This decision was both natural and fitting due to her fascination with German culture and cinema, as well as her previous acquisition of the language. Upon arriving in the German capital, she began working as a film director, assistant director, film restorer and would often lead film-related workshops. In 2017, she became a member of the independent, non-commercial, and collective analogue film laboratory Labor Berlin e.V.
In her work, Melina uses her studies of philosophy, cinema and painting to reconfigure and create a new montage of possibilities. This desire often expresses itself in the very medium itself, through her use of found footage, voices and testimonies, forgotten stories and archives, all combined and reborn into an entirely new production and expression. In her films, she often seeks to manifest a general, non-specific female voice, while the aesthetics of her images wish for a molecular, internationalist, multilingual and emancipatory identity.
