Artists

Melvin J. Montalban is a filmmaker and artist, working in large-scale video art installation and as a director for television, commercials, and music videos.

He is drawn to stories exploring the human impact on our shared world and each other, and how the power of storytelling offers us opportunities to heal.

Melvin exhibited his multi-channel film installation ‘Temple’ in collaboration with visual artist Leila Jeffreys at Vivid 2022, followed up by the sculpturally monumental ‘Nest’ in 2024. He made his television directorial debut with AACTA nominated mini-series ‘The Unusual Suspects’ for SBS, and his short film ‘Letters’, a sobering tale of bushfire survival made in support of MP Zali Steggall’s Climate Change Bill, received Gold for Best Charity Film at Shots Award. A graduate of Australian Film TV Radio School, his shorts have screened widely at festivals in Australia and internationally.

In Residence at Bundanon

At Bundanon I’ll continue script development on ‘The Artemis Fifty-Six’, a near-future sci-fi drama series following intra-solar refugees who have crash-landed on the coast of Australia, detained and branded a threat to national security. My practice sits where social justice storytelling meets cinematic world-building, and this residency allows me to continue the visual development of the project, through landscape and underwater photography, storyboarding and concept art. The South Coast has always been the imagined setting for the tv series, marking this time as an opportunity to reconnect to the region, contemplate displacement from both land and home.