About

Known credits:
19
Birthday:
1983-06-10
Place of birth:
Lisbon, Portugal
Website:
N/A

Chico Peres Smith

Overview

Chico Peres Smith is a filmmaker and media artist whose work interrogates the fragile boundaries between analog memory and digital decay. His practice—spanning experimental documentaries, lyrical shorts, and community-engaged cinema—examines how technologies mediate identity, migration, and collective memory.

Selected Works

Tomorrow Doesn’t Exist (2024)

A glitch-based interrogation of screen culture, structured as a triptych of decaying aspect ratios (9:16, 4:3, 16:9). The film’s handheld collage book becomes both subject and structural blueprint, questioning what survives when media erodes.

Fogo Frio (2024)

A haunting short film that traces the spectral edges of identity through contemplative imagery and destabilized soundscapes.

Tummo (2024)

A minimalist meditation on inner transformation, where abstract visuals and rhythmic editing evoke the heat of self-reinvention.

VDO-POEM: Lisbon Revisited (2010)

A hypnotic adaptation of Fernando Pessoa’s poetry, blending 16mm textures with digital artifacts to explore nostalgia’s fractures.

L’Île da Saudade (2017)

Edited a feature community-engaged documentary on oral histories of Montreal’s Portuguese diaspora, emphasizing the tactile preservation of migrant narratives.

Dead Dicks (2019)

As co-producer and editor, Smith helped shape this genre-bending horror feature into a Fantasia-premiered award winning exploration of mental health and sibling bonds.

Collaborative Practice

Smith’s work thrives in the liminal space between solitary creation and collective action. As co-organizer of Raindance Montreal, he builds bridges between experimental filmmakers and grassroots communities. His editorial collaborations (e.g., Dead Dicks) and participatory projects (e.g., Centre d’histoire de Montréal oral histories) reveal a commitment to cinema as both personal expression and social dialogue.

Education & Influences

A graduate of Lisbon Theatre & Film School, Smith’s methodology merges European avant-garde traditions with North American DIY ethos. His influences range from the media archaeology of Chris Marker to the community praxis of Agnès Varda, filtered through a post-internet lens.

Current Focus

Smith is developing new works that further explore:

The materiality of digital decay (glitch art)

Migrant narratives as sites of archival resistance

Handmade cinema (Archival 16mm/8mm, collage books) as a counterpoint to algorithmic culture.

Known for

Acting

Tomorrow Doesn't Exist Actor Self + Narrator N/A
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Tummo Actor N/A
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Directing

2024 FOGO FRIO Directing Director N/A
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Tummo Directing Director N/A
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Tomorrow Doesn't Exist Directing Director N/A
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Writing

2024 FOGO FRIO Writing Writer N/A
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Tomorrow Doesn't Exist Writing Writer N/A
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Production

2019 Dead Dicks Production Co-Producer 58
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Tomorrow Doesn't Exist Production Producer N/A
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Tummo Production Producer N/A
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Sound

2024 FOGO FRIO Sound Sound Designer N/A
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Tomorrow Doesn't Exist Sound Sound Designer N/A
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Tummo Sound Sound Designer N/A
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Camera

2019 Dead Dicks Camera Digital Imaging Technician 58
Average
Tomorrow Doesn't Exist Camera Camera Operator N/A
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Editing

2024 FOGO FRIO Editing Editor N/A
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2019 Dead Dicks Editing Editor 58
Average
Tomorrow Doesn't Exist Editing Editor N/A
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Tummo Editing Editor N/A
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